In Defense of Sofia...

Oh Lord, I'm actually going to attempt this.  Heaven help me.  Amen.

When I saw the coverage of Sofia Vergara at the Emmy's last night, I almost wet my pants laughing so hard.  Jesus.  That woman is an evil genius.

To all the haters: I have a number of arguments for why it is both acceptable and understandable that Sofia Vergara made the decision to stand on a spinning platform while boring stuff was going on during the Emmy's.  But the first and most important is this - it's her body and she can do whatever the hell she wants to with it.  Is it necessarily responsible for her to contribute to the public discourse in this way?  Maybe, maybe not.  But her actions have people talking about issues I'd like them to be considering, and for that reason alone, I applaud her.

My secondary argument for why it's acceptable is this - the media was probably going to cut to her and comment on her gown and her hair and god knows what else while boring speeches were being given.  By standing on a spinning platform and allowing people to ogle her, she acknowledged the sort of press that made such an event the next logical conclusion in the public discourse.  She took control of her own narrative.  Can you call that naive?  I guess so, but I actually call it the resulting action of a conclusion drawn by a relatively self-aware person.  I also call it funny as hell.

She has a right to do this, bitches.  Why would you automatically assume that she was an unwitting victim of the media's exploitation?  Isn't the pretty, dumb lady-victim narrative getting a little old?

Let me take a step back.  My Grandma Elsbeth was and is a beautiful lady.  And because she was so beautiful in her youth, people always seemed to make a big deal of it.

Something weird happens to you when people look at you all the time.  You're never not self-conscious.  And you never know why people want you to be in a room with them.  I don't know if I'm as pretty as Grandma Elsbeth was at my age, and I'm certainly no Sofia Vergara, but I do know what it's like to have people tell you how pretty you are with a moderate degree of frequency.

It's not something you complain about.  It feels weird to complain about it.  It's a privilege, I suppose, but unlike the kind of privilege that the dude sitting next to me in that tech start-up meeting the other week had - the kind that carries with it the benefit of presumed intelligence - being pretty doesn't usually get a person the kind of attention that most people want.

Grandma Elsbeth is a beautiful person, inside and out.  She is the kindest, sweetest, most creative person I have ever known.  The woman is incapable of negative feelings, whether or not that's healthy.  When you're pretty, you get a lot of "be a good little girl" and "pretty is as pretty does" to go along with your "what a beautiful little thing!"... Thing - yes, thing.  For various reasons, I don't get defensive when someone refers to me as a PYT (thanks a freaking lot for coining THAT one, MJ), but I certainly don't encourage anyone to use the term.

In any event, when you're pretty, you get attention for being pretty.  It doesn't matter that Grandma Elsbeth is brilliant.  It doesn't matter that she was an amazing musician.  Most people don't know she's the best cook that ever existed, or that she kept an itemized list of pantry contents in the cupboards, so that she could always send someone with a ready-made grocery list to the store while she continued cooking.  Outside of the family, most people didn't know she kept updated astrological charts on the wall in the hallway for each family member, or that she let her grandkids pick out patterns for Halloween costumes that she would make by hand each year.  But everyone knew Grandma Elsbeth was pretty.

Being pretty definitely opens some doors - you'd be lying to say it doesn't.  Grandma Elsbeth was the house bassist for the biggest jazz club in Denver when she was 17 years old.  She was damn good, but I don't believe for a second that at least part of what got her the gig was the fact that she was a pretty little white girl.  Similarly, I got invited to an inordinate number of meetings and happy hours for my relative seniority when I started in my industry.  I'd love to think that it was simply for the pleasure of my company - I am relatively hilarious at cocktail parties - but I'd be lying to myself if I didn't acknowledge that at least a few of those invitations were because of the way that I look rather than my intellectual contribution to the discourse.

When I exhibit actual understanding of complex topics, I get one of two responses: surprise or confusion.  I think right now the media and all the haters are responding to Sofia Vergara acknowledging the way the media views her with the latter - confusion.

She can't possibly know what she's doing!  It's not P.C.!

F-you guys.  That's her experience.  She's giving the media what it wants, and NOW you're criticizing someone for it?  How about criticizing the media for putting her on display in the first place?

What is your response to that going to be?  She asks for it?  Look at the way she dresses!  Of COURSE the media puts her on display!

Let me explain something to you - Sofia Vergara simultaneously won and lost the genetic lottery.  She is conventionally beautiful, and now people criticize her for walking around on the planet in a conventionally beautiful body.  What in the name of hell and creation is that??

Sofia Vergara went into a career where she would be put on display in the media - and yes, that's a choice.  It is her choice and her right to go into whatever career she chooses that will cover her bills.  Haters gotta hate - she's conventionally beautiful and gets all the benefits and drawbacks that come with it.  Benefit: you get paid a lot.  Detriment: even if you're smart as hell, you still only get cast as a bimbo.  You could choose not to participate in careers that reinforce those stereotypes, but guess what happens if you do that?  You end up unemployed. Don't hate the player - hate the game.

Every field has these issues.  You can't find a job where gender-disparity isn't apparent, at least not in any field I've investigated.  In the course of my job, I've investigated a lot.

But let's go further down that slippery slope.  I work in insurance - finance-related, but my customer segment focus is technology.  At one point, I ran a region for my company.  Generally people would encourage my presence at parties with absolutely no idea my role.  I was assumed to be the trainee that was tagging along.  The reaction to my title/job role was always fairly similar.

"YOU are in charge of that?  That's a REALLY big role."

Well, fuck you very much too - is what I wanted to say, but instead I said this: "Yup.  It's so weird when there's a brain in one of their pretty little heads."

I think it translated.  The man I'm thinking about in this instance seemed very uncomfortable around me after that.  Good - your comment made me uncomfortable; now you can be too.

Sofia Vergara - YOU made the decision to just stand on a rotating platform and let people ogle you in the same way they likely would if you simply sat in your seat and did nothing?  That's an awfully BIG decision - you must not understand what it means.

It appears that it's OK for people to give you attention for being pretty until they realize that you know they're doing it.

...

When I was in college, I went to a New Year's Eve party.  I got trashed.  Trashity-trash-trash-trashed.

It was my right to do that if I wanted to.  It wasn't a good idea, but it was my right.  I was at a party and knew 39 out of the 40 people there.  Not only that, the 39 people that were there were really, really, really good friends of mine.  Nice people.  Awesome people.  People that I still can't friend on Facebook because I can't bring myself to talk some of them still.  Because the ONE dude I didn't know...  The ONE - he was the ONE person that decided after I had passed out in bed that it would be totally reasonable to crawl in with me when no one was looking.

He didn't go to Berkeley.  He was a friend of a friend's from high school - I think from Monterey.  I don't remember everything that happened.  There was a lot of me rolling onto my stomach to try to keep him from groping my private bits.  There was a lot of me flailing my arms to try to push him off of me.  I was half dressed when I woke.  I don't remember much else, but the details I do remember, I'll spare you.  It was unpleasant, to understate things significantly.

There was no recourse.  There was no forensic evidence - at least none that could prove anything.  I felt like I was living outside my own body for the majority of that semester, and I don't think I really got back into it until fairly recently.  It became my new normal.  My body wasn't my own - other people could do what they wanted with it, even if I didn't want them to.  It was easier to feel like I didn't inhabit it.

Fortunately, this became a somewhat merciful defense mechanism as I moved into a career in a very, very, very male dominated industry.  I kind of pride myself that I've never slept with a coworker or colleague, though I'm sure many assume I have.  How else would I have gotten this position?

That presumption is certainly part of the long list of bullshit I've had to put up with.

Let's take a quick look at the atrocities committed against just me:

1 - On 3 separate occasions, unknown men in various hotels have figured out which hotel room I was staying in and made attempts to contact me by leaving anonymous notes, asking the reception desk to call up to my room or other.  In 2 of those instances, I was forced to move to other rooms during my stay to stop the people from continuing.  In each instance, the hotel was very accommodating and understood why it would make me feel unsafe, but in none of those circumstances was the man who tried to contact me asked to leave the hotel as a guest.

2 - When standing on tip-toe and leaning over to reach a menu on the bar during a work happy hour, a coworker felt it completely acceptable to yell "Look, she's presenting!" (like a doe in heat) to my other male coworkers.  I immediately turned around and backhanded him.  It was an automatic reflex.  I was called in to HR the next day.

3 - Four male senior executives at various business partners of my company's attempted to shove their respective tongues down my throat at/during/on a happy hour/conference/colleague's birthday party/work trip.

I could keep going.  I don't want to.  I don't really want to talk about the dude that tried to get into my pants at that NYE party all those years ago either, but it seems to me now that I don't have much choice.  I have to assume that there are other college co-eds that are going through exactly what I did, and they need to know that they're justified in feeling whatever they're feeling.  They need to know they aren't alone.  This sort of bullshit happens to 20% of women walking around in this country - 1 in 5, people.

When I bring up these things - these actions men have taken because of some sort of presumed ownership of my body - a feeling of implied acceptance of their advancements that I don't believe they'd feel toward most people, apparently based upon my mere presence in the room...  A lot of people tell me I'm being a bad sport.  I didn't get raped, so what am I complaining about?

Wait a second... Did you hear what I just said?

In college, there was literally no recourse for me.  I wasn't "technically raped", and there was little forensic evidence to tie him to me.  Additionally, I had been drunk.  Additionally, he and I had been seen speaking to each other and he had bought me a drink.  Additionally, he didn't go to Cal.  Additionally, I didn't know his last name (it would have been really easy to find out, but it seemed impossible at the time).  Additionally - and here's the kicker - even when I told friends about some of what had happened, most of them acted like it was no big deal - so I just started telling myself that I was overreacting.  I was overreacting by seeing him all over campus when I knew he wasn't there... getting so scared I couldn't leave my room for several days... gaining 20 pounds - starting to get tattoos and piercings to feel like I had control over my body... canceling classes and begging administration to let me go to pass/no pass grading so my GPA wasn't impacted too greatly...  It took a freaking inquest to get that last one done - additionally, when I explained why I was having these problems, no one offered resources or suggested that I attempt to press charges.  (And this was at U.C. freakin' Berkeley - bastion of liberal, feminist, hippy shit. How are women treated on other campuses across the country?) But in the end they grudgingly allowed me to change my Econ course to P/NP...  Anyway, it felt like it was all just an overreaction on my part, and it all made me feel guilty.

I stopped complaining about how and why it impacted me.  I stopped complaining that it ever even happened, unless forced.  Occasionally when getting into new relationships, it became necessary to explain what had happened to my boyfriends.  For years, I couldn't even say it out loud - I felt too guilty about complaining when other people had been assaulted so much worse than I had.  I felt too guilty about being impacted by something no one seemed to think was a big deal when I told them.  In defense of those boyfriends, they none of them minimized it.

It took me YEARS to get to a point where I could tell people anything about it.  I still hate NYE and very few friends know why.  The first friend I disclosed details to a few years ago later accused me of pretending like it was a big deal to me in order to... to I don't know what.  This person and I are no longer friends largely because she never allowed me to discuss the matter with her once she decided that I'd lied.  She also blamed her reluctance to continue our friendship on the fact that I'd gone on anti-depressants.  In email.  I guess it was nice of her to send an email.

Let's trace that line of reasoning back.  Society reinforced in me that it was no big deal that someone presumed ownership over my body.  As such, I repressed/minimized the fact that someone had assaulted me for years.  Once I finally sought help and got on some anti-depressants so I could start to process what had happened to me... Once I finally started feeling brave enough to share what had happened with friends for the first time in ages... The friend I told said I was a liar and she didn't want to be friends with me anymore.  She also never gave me an opportunity to explain.

She is a world-class bitch, but society and the media reinforce that her response is OK.  I didn't have a single friend try to call her out on it.  The media still barely reports on sexual assaults, little is being done to prevent them, and when a woman complains about a person taking liberties to which they are not entitled... SHE is the one people get mad at?  Sofia Vergara stands on a pedestal and spins around for everyone to see pro-actively instead of waiting for it to happen on E!, and SHE'S the one people critique?  She didn't ask for that body, just like I didn't ask for all those guys to figure out which hotel room I was in so they could stalk me.  But when either one of us point that out, she gets criticized and I get moved to a different room...

How on earth does that make any sense at all?

We're accommodating the status quo, rather than pointing out what's wrong with it.  When someone highlights what's wrong in our society, they should be applauded, whether the method they choose is black humor or blog.  Laugh and the world laughs with you... unless you're trying to laugh at the stupid ways people treat you, in which case shut up and pretend like it isn't happening.  Heaven forbid we make media trolls or businessmen uncomfortable.

So go for it, Sofia.  Own that body, and make it work for you, sister!  You're making people uncomfortable, which is probably a good place to start.

(Important footnote: I have a great number of male and female colleagues who have been exceptionally supportive and wonderful to me throughout my career.  Similarly, I had several college friends who didn't minimize my experience and basically got me through college, whether or not they knew they were doing it.  I want to make sure that their good work and kindness isn't ignored by this piece.  Gentlemen, ladies, friends - you know who you are.)