tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7146512.post162453001022252995..comments2024-03-12T22:31:46.500-04:00Comments on What Would Phoebe Do?: The universal and particular in "Tiny Furniture"Phoebe Maltz Bovyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17996039330841139883noreply@blogger.comBlogger6125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7146512.post-59993387664718034042012-12-04T11:07:10.395-05:002012-12-04T11:07:10.395-05:00PG,
All I can do is repeat: understand, not excus...PG,<br /><br />All I can do is repeat: understand, not excuse. I don't know what part of that I wasn't clear on. There's obviously a spectrum, from feeling kind of lost at graduation to full-on bratty takeover of the parental abode. If you've been on one end of it, you might have more sympathy for the other, even if you essentially sympathize with the parents (while, you know, also maybe blaming them for the way they raised their kid).Phoebe Maltz Bovyhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/17996039330841139883noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7146512.post-60972543011394800112012-12-04T11:00:40.220-05:002012-12-04T11:00:40.220-05:00It's easy for an adult to look at this and thi...<i>It's easy for an adult to look at this and think, how entitled, but if you're at that specific moment in life, you are, I think, genuinely confused.</i><br /><br />That's what I'm arguing against, the idea that it's somehow too "easy" to think "how entitled," that thinking that indicates some failure to truly grapple with the mindset of the recent graduate. I didn't claim that you're saying the behavior should be celebrated, only that you seem disinclined to condemn it.<br /><br /><i>a guy you're not even sleeping with</i><br /><br />Not quite following how this affects the propriety of having him move in.PGhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/09381347581328622706noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7146512.post-86601824593847920112012-12-03T19:48:27.004-05:002012-12-03T19:48:27.004-05:00OK, I'm not clear what you're arguing agai...OK, I'm not clear what you're arguing against. Did I say that we should praise adults who move back home and act like bratty teenagers? That Aura is a character viewers should emulate? That parents ought to put up with this kind of behavior? No - understandable isn't excusable. It takes a moment, when you're used to home being home, to realize you're suddenly a guest. It's possible to have felt this - I certainly have, and other than that summer after college, I never moved back home - without having actually done anything particularly bratty. <br /><br />And in terms of treating parents differently - different kids-as-in-children are expected to do different chores. With roommates, it's obvious you have to pitch in, to sort out some arrangement about cleaning and the like. But if you've had 18 years of your parents doing whichever thing for you, maybe it's not obvious on day one that because you've graduated from college, or are 22, or whichever other milestone, you now do whichever chore. <br /><br />Anyway, the point, to reiterate, is not that this is behavior that should be celebrated. Just that the basic idea behind not knowing what to make of your situation when you've just arrived home from college isn't so out-there, and is something it's entirely possible to identify with, even if you personally would never - as Aura does - drink X bottles of your mother's wine and have a guy you're not even sleeping with move into your childhood bedroom and sleep in your mother's bed.Phoebe Maltz Bovyhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/17996039330841139883noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7146512.post-81124434091169508942012-12-03T19:34:31.426-05:002012-12-03T19:34:31.426-05:00Anyway, I interpreted this less as the daughter be...<i> Anyway, I interpreted this less as the daughter being entitled than the daughter being seriously troubled. Why exactly can't she go outside to smoke? Maybe she's not leaving her room a heck of a lot.<br /></i><br /><br />I didn't get that at all from the letter -- it seemed much more that she was smoking in her room because she wanted to. I mean, having to go outside to smoke is often inconvenient. My brother-in-law is a smoker and doesn't have such a bad time with it in Arizona, but when he visited NYC in winter it was a real pain to have to stand in the literally freezing cold. Of course, not being entitled and immature, as a guest he did it with perfectly good grace and never even asked if he could smoke inside.<br /><br />I guess based on my brief stints of living at home since high school (I don't think ever for more than two months at a time), even parents who were pretty strict with child-rearing usually don't expect to assert that same level of control over an adult. They didn't try to dictate the hours I kept, whether/ when I went out, etc. <br /><br />If you're not paying rent as an adult, then you're someone's guest, and those standards of cleanliness/ helpfulness are the ones that apply. I say that having lived last year for a couple months each with my sister and then with my brother-in-law, rent-free -- I would have felt like I was behaving like a spoiled, entitled brat if I hadn't kept the room decently clean and been helping out with cooking and housework. But of course neither of them was interested in telling me what to do beyond that.<br /><br />I don't see why it should be deemed at all socially acceptable to treat one's parents worse than one would treat other people. There's a common psychological tendency to treat people worse when you feel sure that they will never abandon you, but its commonality doesn't make it non-condemnable.PGhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/09381347581328622706noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7146512.post-30004151280123848632012-12-03T17:29:35.082-05:002012-12-03T17:29:35.082-05:00Again, PG, too letter-of-the-law. I linked to this...Again, PG, too letter-of-the-law. I linked to this because of the theme, not to celebrate it. I totally agree that the smoking-daughter letter is weird, but mostly because it's kind of a known thing these days that a) people don't want to rent apts where someone is/was smoking, and b) everyone's health is potentially impacted when someone smokes indoors. And as you say, this is a perfectly normal thing for landlords these days to request, and something the daughter might well be dealing with in a regular living situation. Anyway, I interpreted this less as the daughter being entitled than the daughter being seriously troubled. Why exactly can't she go outside to smoke? Maybe she's not leaving her room a heck of a lot.<br /><br />But if we look at the broader issues here, the thing is, if you're an adult, you're used to making your own choices and living with them. I mean, take the less-dramatic example of mess (not filth, not overflowing ashtrays) in one's own bedroom. Or keeping odd hours (on weekends, or depending the line of work, in general). It's clear enough that landlords/roommates are going to demand fewer, or at least different things than would one's own parents. Also, some people who might be totally reasonable with friends/strangers might well fall into old childhood habits chore-wise when in those surroundings.Phoebe Maltz Bovyhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/17996039330841139883noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7146512.post-84470026550938092852012-12-03T17:16:02.846-05:002012-12-03T17:16:02.846-05:00The smoking daughter in the NYT letter comes off a...The smoking daughter in the NYT letter comes off as awful not because she's somehow role-confused but because she is just rude and, yes, entitled.<br /><br />I am paying rent to a real, non-related-party landlord, and I can't smoke in my apartment because the landlord forbids it. If I were to smoke there, it would be a breach of contract with legal and financial repercussions. The letter writer's daughter seems to feel entitled to behavior that she wouldn't be able to get away with in the real world.<br /><br />It's different when parents are imposing rules on their adult children that no one else in the world would be imposing on any adult, e.g. dictating with whom she can spend time or what she should eat. But there are plenty of places where you pay rent yet must follow rules about smoking, <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/05/fashion/05webster.html?pagewanted=all" rel="nofollow">guests</a>, etc., so it seems to me quite reasonable for your unpaid landlords, in the form of your parents, to be able to make similar rules without this being treated as infantilizing you. If anything, refusing to follow reasonable rules of a residency seems a sign of immaturity rather than adulthood.PGhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/09381347581328622706noreply@blogger.com