Is Your Crush Your Soul Mate? And other really wrong things.

I was reminded this morning about my high school love of Sassy and Seventeen magazines. I later moved on to Jane. For my residents as an RA in college, I used to religiously paper my hallway and the bathroom stalls with pages from Jane. Nowadays, I flip through the Anthropologie catalog and call it getting my fix, but it's not. I still like reading magazines, but even if I thought I had the time and money to spend on them, I'd never get a mag like Sassy again. No Cosmo, no Lucky. If I flip through these magazines in waiting rooms, I certainly get some delight, but quickly it goes sour when I start to feel the anxiety of not being cool (or thin, or sexy, or accomplished) enough. Many people have written about the effects of these stereotypical girly magazines, especially on the women readership. Even though I was a liberated feminist-adolescent fully aware of the mirage, years later, I can still trace the lines in my thought patterns (and others) where gendered media got its hooks in me (us all).

D joked with her boss yesterday that she and I haven't been dating each other, that actually I just needed a place to stay when she was passing by with her Penske. And to "test" her story, her boss starting asking her questions that she would know if she and I were "really" dating. Simple questions like what's her (my) favorite color, favorite musical artist, favorite author. To D's small horror she didn't feel confident answering any of them, even though she had guesses, but only for two of them. This doesn't phase me. I see this moment as one of those super realistic quizzes my fourteen-years-old self used to read and sometimes cheat in Sassy. Is Your Crush Your Soul Mate? Are You Too Aggressive? How Compatible Are You Really? What You're Doing In Bed That You Could Be Doing Better--Okay, this last one is completely made up, but I'm sure it's not far off the mark.

These are the phrases I remember exploding in crazy fonts on the covers of the magazines I craved. I was full of self-restraint though; when I got a new mag in the mail, I didn't flip straight to the quiz. I patiently read my magazines cover to cover, following the sequence in which they were laid out. I have always been a structuralist. But I digress. D may guess that I like orange more than green (I don't) or that the Yeah Yeah Yeahs are my favorite band (they probably are), but this says nothing about us as a couple. We have never been able to compare our relationship to others, although I've mistakenly tried once or twice. Knowing these kinds of tidbits about each other isn't what makes us work or not work. I think it says more about us that we aren't the type of women who need to buy a dozen balloons in our love's favorite color to prove the sweetness and care we feel for each other--although there is nothing wrong with spontaneous and quirky shows of affection. I'm saying I'm rather glad that we don't have to keep up with the Joneses on this one. D doesn't know my favorite author for a great reason--I don't know who my favorite author is. But D does know what I put in my tea when I'm sick. She knows how I like my Nalgene splash-guard situated, she knows that there isn't an ear bud that will both fit in my ear and not fall out of my ear during a run. She (hopefully) likes that I answer simple questions in long trains of thought and analysis, she doesn't call me out when I'm too drunk to have the conversation I'm trying to have, and she encourages me to make it through those last 5 assisted pull ups. She knows more tidbits about me than anyone else. And while this fact may make us rate high on next month's quiz in Marie Claire these are still the wrong questions to be asking ourselves. Questions like do I know D's bra size and favorite sweet stem from an era that says women need to be showered with gifts--preferably chocolates, flowers, and sexy underwear--in order for men to be doing their jobs correctly as complementary partners. Thankfully, I haven't lived in that era for a while.