by hilzoy
Via Matt Yglesias, the inimitable Kriston, on a review of what sounds like a truly dreadful book:
“So this metaphor from Laura Sessions Stepp’s Unhooked, excerpted in the WaPo review mentioned below, comes unhinged:
“Your body is your property. . . . Think about the first home you hope to own. You wouldn’t want someone to throw a rock through the front window, would you?”
The house cracketh up:
Yglesias: Your body is your property. Think about the first home you hope to own. You want to have a big party and invite all your friends over.
Spencer: Your body is your property. Think about the first home you hope to own. You don’t want people breaking in through the front or the back.
Me: Your body is your property. Think about the first home you hope to own. If you’re ever in a bind you can always take out a mortgage.”
This metaphor goes unhinged long before the rocks start flying through the window. In what possible sense is your body like a house you buy? Do you have to save up for the down payment? Are you disembodied before you put the financing together? Can you get prequalified for a loan, and if so, how? Do you get to go househunting before you settle on one? If not, what if you get stuck with some sort of godawful McMansion or decaying 60s ranch-style dwelling? What if your house has termite damage? Can you buy it as a tear-down? What if the developer looks at you proudly and says: Of course, my real inspiration is Thomas Kinkade? Can you run screaming into the night — leaving your body behind?
If only you can occupy the house that is your body, what do you do with all the extra bedrooms? Have the developers gone in for all those bizarre new rooms, like a Great Room and a Mud Room and a Media Suite? If so, which bodily parts do these correspond to? While we’re at it, what, exactly, counts as your yard or your lot? Are there zoning requirements? What if you really don’t like the neighborhood? Do you have to worry about property values or the local school system or nearby Superfund sites?
Moving on to sex: obviously, having a rock thrown through the window of your home isn’t sex; it’s being groped. (Rape would presumably be home invasion.) Hooking up is more like inviting people you don’t know very well to stay over when they’re in town, while being someone’s paid concubine would, I suppose, be like taking in a lodger. Inviting people to use your guest rooms seems rather pleasant and hospitable and friendly, though. Aren’t we supposed to be hospitable? What about all those stories in which someone shows up and asks for shelter, and turns out to be a God in disguise? Isn’t the moral that of course you should let people stay over when they need to, since, after all, you never know?? Besides, what are all the guest rooms for otherwise? Are they just ornamental? Why would you want to have guest rooms at all if you never intend to have guests?
If your body were your first house, then what on earth happens when you trade up? Do you have to live in your first house for the rest of your life? Also, if your body is your first house, then what is marriage like? Does one of you have to move in? Isn’t this an awfully literal way to take the idea of two persons becoming one flesh? Is it even possible? Do you have to put one of your houses on a trailer and move it next to the other one, possibly on a very, very large bed, or what?
Honestly. Some people should think before they write.
Discuss.
Well, everyone should, but it will never happen.
Meanwhile, mockery of truly dumb statements is always an option, if not necessarily a “gracious” one.
Hmmm, just being hospitable in San Diego….. 😉
He is kind of suggesting that we all have mobile homes isn’t he?
It’s a she, and I suppose so. Mobile homes with breakable windows, in neighborhoods full of unpleasant rock-throwers.
I was going to post a comment, but I decided to think first. I’ll come back when I’m done.
Bernard: you’re one of the other people who don’t have to.
Hilzoy, I’m curious, what metaphor would you use for your first house?
That’s not meant to be a challenge, I’m just trying to think what mine would be like. Of course, here in Japan, buying your house is a bit of a different experience. The part that freaked me out was that we had to get all of the money of the loans, and meet the seller (we bought a used house, which is a bit strange) and physically give her the money. Basically, strangers with a huge pile of cash on the living room coffee table makes it hard to find an appropriate metaphor.
Of course the right-wing metaphor would involve property…
This is completely ridiculous. A house, jeez.
My body is either a 56 Little Bird with the port windows or a 68 Glamour Bird with the 428 FE V-8 and Suicide doors and wrap-around rear seat.
Vroom.
Some people should think before they write.
But, hilzoy: then what would the internets do with all that vacant bandwidth? (Or newspapers with all that blank space?)
The body-as-house goes nowhere fast as a moral metaphor, but has rich comedy potential:
Your body is your property. The good news is, no one can foreclose on it. The bad news is, you can’t just up and move when it wears out.
Your body is your property. You can renovate and remodel, to some extent; however, if your body is the equivalent of a single-wide trailer, there’s no point in hoping it’ll be a castle some day… and no, piling on the weight doesn’t make it a mighty fortress, either.
Your body is your property. And when you’re old and incontinent, you can think of your body as waterfront property.
Do you have to be so damned reasonable on every damned topic?!? How on earth am I supposed to keep up the outrage that the GOP demands of me? You are seriously harshing my mellow! Employing reason and logic … I mean really – it’s just not fair….
It’s not my religion, so it’s probably overly impertinent of me to bring it up, but I recall that some guy once claimed that my body is a temple of the Holy Spirit, who is in me, whom I have received from God, and that I am not my own — that I was bought at a price. Therefore I should honor God with my body.
I’d probably get into Marcotte-level trouble if I tagged onto that claim that my preferred means of honoring God with my body would be to have lots and lots of really hott and dirty fulfilling sex.
Of course, the temple I went to as a kid had a building across the street that included a gym and a swimming pool. And my body has never tended to be filled only on High Holy Days. There are more than a few other ways my body seems unlike a temple.
“harshing my mellow”…
Thanks for reminding me of the below, OCSteve.
(just because it’s an open thread…)
“A Blesing From My Sixteen Year’s Son” by Mary Karr
I have this son who assembled inside me
during Hurricane Gloria. In a flash, he appeared,
in a heartbeat. Outside, pines toppled.
Phone lines snapped and hissed like cobras,
Inside, he was a raw pearl: microscopic, luminous.
Look at the muscle obelisk of him now
pawing through the icebox for more grapes.
Sixteen years and not a bone broken,
not a single stitch. By his age,
I was marked more ways, and small.
He’s a slouching six foot three,
with implausible blue eyes, which settle
on the pages of Emerson’s “Self-Reliance”
with profound belligerence.
A girl with a navel ring
could make his cell phone go brr,
or an Afro’d boy leaning on a mop at Taco Bell-
creatures strange as dragons or eels.
Balanced on a kitchen stool, each gives counsel
arcane as any oracle’s. Bruce claims school
‘is harshing my mellow.’ Case longs to date
a tattooed girl, because he wants a woman
‘willing to do stuff she’ll regret.’
They’ve come to lead my son
into his broadening spiral.
Someday soon, the tether
will snap. I birthed my own mom
into oblivion. The night my son smashed
the car fender, then rode home
in the rain-streaked cop car, he asked, ‘Did you
and Dad screw up so much?”
He’d let me tuck him in,
my grandmother’s wedding quilt
from 1912 drawn to his goateed chin. ‘Don’t
blame us’, I said. ‘You’re your own
idiot now.’ At which he grinned.
The cop said the girl in the crimped Chevy
took it hard. He’d found my son
awkwardly holding her in the canted headlights,
where he’d draped his own coat
over her shaking shoulders. ‘My fault,’
he’d confessed right off.
‘Nice kid,’ said the cop.
Mr. Universe was telling [Johnny Carson] how important it was to keep fit—’Don’t forget, Mr. Carson, your body is the only home you’ll ever have’—and Johnny said, ‘Yes, my home is pretty messy. But I have a woman who comes in once a week.’
Everyone’s heard about the new Ben & Jerry’s ice cream flavor, right?
“Your body is your property. Think about the first home you hope to own.”
I don’t even want to think about the pre-purchase home inspection.
“The basement has gone condo, and there isn’t enough closet space upstairs. Pests have moved into the attic, where they occasionally rearrange the insulation and sometimes die inside the walls. There’s been some settling along the roofline and the foundation is suspect.
Additionally, you’ll never qualify for a reverse mortgage.”
Wheeeeee.
After Snuffleupagus, and Supreme Chancellor Palpatine, what’s the better name for “scrotum,” which is also unspeakable?
After Snuffleupagus, and Supreme Chancellor Palpatine, what’s the better name for “scrotum,” which is also unspeakable?[Gary Farber]
Egg pouch?
On the plus side, if the portion of the right represented by Stepp wants to commit to the “your body is your property” metaphor, I can’t wait to see the mental backflips they then have to perform vis a vis abortion and drug use. Always entertaining.
Gary: The best euphemism I’ve heard recently for “scrotum,” in the direct-to-DVD Family Guy movie, was “coin purse.”
A great thread on Grammar Police offering other examples of “Your body is your property…”
My favorite:
Hilzoy,
Thank you. That’s very kind.
It’s going to be interesting when the movie 300 comes out.
It was written by Frank Miller, when his authoritarian streak was still in check, before 9-11, before he snapped and fully embraced right-wing nihilism.
Your body is your property. Think about the first home you hope to own. You’re crazy if you think you’ll fit that whole couch in through that little tiny door.
Your body is your property. Think about the first home you hope to own. To the right lender, both can be used as collateral for your mortgage.
God, I have to stop. The opportunities for evil are too strong. I could be all day at this.
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