In Defense of the Happy Girl

Petchary is not generally obsessed with celebrity. I stay away from the gossip columns and E! channel as much as I possibly can. But this is such a beautifully written, wistful little piece from the pre-eminent New Yorker magazine (and if you want to find good writing, you need look no further than the New Yorker) that I could not resist reproducing it, below. By the way, happy 88th birthday, New Yorker. Still going strong.

Whenever there is a major awards ceremony, I have started a tradition of posting all the wondrous (and not so wondrous) gowns in an album on my Facebook page. My dear friends, near and far, male and female, then put on their Fashion Police uniform and critique them. Sometimes the commentary is quite devastating, but it’s just a bit of fun and escapism. We were not too unkind to Anne Hathaway. Anne, a star of “The Devil Wears Prada,” actually wore Prada at the 2013 Oscars, after a last-minute switch from Valentino. I read some much more horrid remarks in the online media after the ceremony. 

I think I was a “happy girl” myself, once. At the age of nine or ten, I wanted everyone (especially, of course, other nine- and ten-year-old girls) to love me, or at least find me interesting. Possibly, even, fascinating. But I was basically too shy, and had virtually zero “personality,” and I really preferred to stay home reading a book, truth be told. I might even have been a bit of a female “nerd,” although we didn’t know that word, then. So at the age of thirteen or fourteen, I retreated.

Me, happily in retreat (Old family photo).

So I can relate to this article, in many ways. 

You can read this marvelous piece by Sasha Weiss here: http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/culture/2013/02/anne-hathaway-in-defense-of-the-happy-girl.html#ixzz2MKg7g2Ye

And if you want to take a look at my Facebook album, and the comments therein, here is the link: https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.10151453716864561.504076.815889560&type=3  Or look under photos/albums at Emma Caroline Lewis.

Anne and her Oscar. Happy. (Photo: Jason Merritt/Getty Images)

 

Oh, Anne! With your small head and pert nose and oversized, ready smile and glossy pixie cut and squeakily tuneful speaking voice, uttering lines like “It came true!” as you gaze at your newly won Oscar with moistened doe-eyes, wearing a powder-pink Prada gown adorned with diamonds and bows: Why are you so annoying?

This question was posed repeatedly in the days after Anne Hathaway’s Oscar win for her role as the destitute-prostitute mother Fantine, in “Les Mis”—and various answers have been offered: she’s too actorly, and reminds us of the show-tune-belting nightmare we knew in high school; she’s polished, successful, and driven, and people still find this distasteful in a woman; plump faces are the vogue and her face is too thin; the public every so often elects a random celebrity victim for vitriolic hatred—every generation needs one, and she is ours; her sunny persona is a coverup for steely ambition that catapulted her out of youthful stardom into a mature career that runs the gamut from eccentric indie to big-franchise blockbuster. To these reasonably convincing propositions, I’ll add one more: she represents the archetype of the happy girl, which is one that many people resist.

Just flip randomly through the photographs of women on the red carpet: their faces are taut and inscrutable, their bodies often posed in the defensive posture of one muscled arm on hip. They smile without teeth. Their eyes are glazed and look off into a hazy middle distance, guarding some secret. Now, look at Anne: she stands with her long arms at her sides, looking directly (even a little pleadingly) into the camera, her smile is toothy and takes up half of her face. It’s a look of unfettered excitement and openness, an expression of high-wattage joy that reminds me of none other than a nine-year-old girl about to dig into a big slice of birthday cake. There’s generally only a small window of time when girls have that mien of utter at-homeness in the world—it gets snuffed out in many of them by age twelve or thirteen, when their glance turns inward, scrutinizing. Anne has somehow managed to retain that bright look, and many people would like to wipe it off her face.

Let’s take a quick survey of the people who were applauded for their red-carpet performances. A pale, limping Kristin Stewart with her perennial teen-agery pout and a bruise on her arm; Jennifer Lawrence, who is casually funny and naturally sarcastic and is most famous for her tomboyish roles; actresses in middle age like Sally Field and Meryl Streep, whom one can admire freely in the way that one admires a mother. Bruised teen-agers: likeable. Women who seem a little like men, or like they can hang with men: likeable. Post-menopausal women, old enough to be sexually non-threatening: likeable.

But I’m not so sure that girls are likeable, and I think this goes for girlish women like Anne Hathaway, who retain a bounding, uncontained energy. Look no further for evidence than the treatment of an actual nine-year-old girl who made an appearance at the Oscars, Quvenzhané Wallis, the star of “Beasts of the Southern Wild.” She was meanly criticized for spontaneously raising up her arms and making a muscle when her name was called in the list of nominees for best actress. Seth MacFarlane made a joke about her being too young for George Clooney, and The Onion tweeted its infamous tweet: “Everyone else seems afraid to say it, but that Quvenzhané Wallis is kind of a …., right?” The tweet was taken down and apologized for, but The Onion, as usual, had blurted out a terribly ugly version of a suppressed, itchy attitude that is probably more widely held than we’d like to think: the idea that young girls are ridiculous, annoying, and a little disgusting. They’re glittery, they squeal, they like attention, and—most disturbingly—they threaten to evoke illicit sexual feelings. The word “….” didn’t bubble up by accident.

Coincidentally, last night I came across a wonderful scene about the predicament of the little girl in the second installment of the autobiographical novel “My Struggle,” by the Norwegian writer Karl Ove Knausgaard. (It’s published here in May.) Karl takes his little daughter, Vanje, to a classmate’s birthday party. She is a shy and introverted child, but she longs to play with other children, and looks forward to the party with a mix of trepidation and eagerness. She chooses to wear a new pair of sparkling golden shoes. When she arrives, she is thrust into a room with other children, who are all playing wildly. Karl watches her as she tries to figure out how to break in:

For a while she stood observing them. Then it was as if she had decided to take the plunge.

“I’ve got golden shoes!” she said.

She bent forward and took off one shoe, held it up in the air in case anyone wanted to see. But no one did. When she realized that, she put it back on.

This scene is almost unbearably touching because it so deftly encapsulates a problem we all face: having to temper naked pleasure so as to be thought socially appropriate. Little girls learn very quickly not to ask so openly for praise, and to modulate their excitement if they want to be acceptable.

Anne Hathaway seems to never have quite ingested this lesson. She’s the girl proudly holding out to us her sparkling golden shoes. She wants praise. (And I don’t think it has been said enough that she deserves it. She’s a very gifted actress, particularly when she plays roles that cut against her cheery persona, like Jack Twist’s lacquered, embittered wife in “Brokeback Mountain.”) Would it really be so terrible to give her the applause that she craves?

Related articles (some of them rather mean):

 

Anne. Her ribbons and bows

Anne Hathaway’s Tirade? (girlygirl.typepad.com)

Anne Hathaway ‘Is A Feminist,’ Says Girls Star Lena Dunham (contactmusic.com)

Why it’s OK to hate Anne Hathaway (and anyone else you want) (macleans.ca)

Anne Hathaway wins best supporting actress Oscar (elleuk.com)

Anne Hathaway makes Oscar dress apology (elleuk.com)

Why you love to hate Anne Hathaway (cnn.com)

Anne Hathaway Apologizes For ‘Any Disappointment’ Her Oscar Dress May Have Caused (pinkisthenewblog.com)

SNL: Three’s The Charm For Anne Hathaway (rr.com)

Anne Hathaway Wants You To Like Her, Dammit! (dlisted.com)

Happy Birthday to the New Yorker! (fora.tv)