What it feels like for a girl

As you readers know, I love The Office. It is Thursday night appointment television. As you also know, I am most openly critical of the things that I love. Hence, my feelings about this week's episode, "Prince Family Paper." Half of the episode was an homage to the failed ABC series, Are You Hot?. While Michael and Dwight were away, the rest of the office debated whether Hilary Swank was hot or not. This took up their entire day.

For many viewers, I'm sure this seemed like a yet another typical office discussion that went on for too long. For me, it was yet another reminder of the impossible standards by which even highly successful women are judged. It also reminded me that all of the writers on The Office are probably male (and white) [Edit, 1/24/2009: Except for Mindy Kaling. Thanks, molecularshyness!], which results in most of the stories centering around average-looking guys judging and hooking up with women waaay out of their league (I'm looking at you, Kevin).

Hilary Swank has won two Oscars. Yet her worth, as described by one of America's most influential television programs, comes down to whether she is hot or not. I have never heard anyone question or even mention the hotness quotient of the similarly-accoladed Tom Hanks, Jack Nicholson or Dustin Hoffman (who still gets to star in movies with a woman 20 years younger than he is). Instead, I get to hear the most powerful woman in the world worry about the fact that she currently weighs 200 pounds, and let that fact overshadow her billion-dollar empire or her hand in electing Barack Obama to the presidency of the United States.

The episode also reminded me of a conversation I had this week that went like this:

Gentleman 1: Have you met Sally yet?

Gentleman 2: No, I still haven't met her. Everyone keeps telling me about her.

Me: She was at the party last Friday.

Gentleman 2: That's what I heard.

Gentleman 1: She is bangin'.

Gentleman 2: I know. That's what I keep hearing.

Me: She's a nice lady. And she has a very successful career.

Gentleman 2: I can't tell anything from that. But "bangin'" I understand.

Lovely.

Before that conversation, I was having a happy, confident day. I was still rolling, jazzed from one of my friends stating that if she were a gentleman, she would date me because I'm nice, knowledgeable, kindhearted and friendly. I refrained myself from joking than we should get a timeshare in Provincetown and instead said, "thank you." I told her that wish more guys would appreciate those qualities in me and share her sentiments, but all they care about is hotness. She said, "No, you will be successful with gentlemen." Since she was so certain, I believed her for a few hours and thought I was so cool. Now, not so much anymore. Even in an era where I can realistically aspire to be President. Or rather, first lady.

It doesn't matter if you're Fred Savage's dorky character on Working or the super popular Bright from Everwood. All that matters to guys, regardless of orientation, is hot. Then when they get hot, they're disappointed because they also got shallow. What did you expect, doofus? Like I'm supposed to have sympathy for your poor choices? I don't think so. Or, in the words of Cher Horowitz, as if.

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The CW doesn't care about black people.

I first heard about this today on "Big Boy's Neighborhood's Liz Hernandez".

Sitcom Saga: No Finale For 'Girlfriends' and Litigation Looms, by Jawn Murray, BlackVoices.com.

. . . The CW had opted to cancel [Girlfriends] without fulfilling its remaining nine episodes.

Well I've now learned exclusively that The CW made the cast members an offer to return for a "retrospective" episode that would feature recaps of the previous shows and cast members reflecting on those shows.

The CW apparently only offered to pay the actors half of their episodic salary to shoot the makeshift finale, thus the stars collectively opted not to participate.

In addition, several people close to the show tell me that The CW refuses to honor the contracts of the principal cast members and does not intend to pay the actors for the nine episodes that will not be taped.

Now the show stars have hired a litigator who will file a joint lawsuit on behalf of the talent, suing the network for the money they are due.

"The network told them point blank, 'Sue us!' After using this show to help build its name, The CW has turned their back on them and disrespected them in the most horrible way," said someone associated with the show, who spoke under the condition of anonymity.

This is some nonsense. I don't even watch Girlfriends on The CW, because the show has gone downhill since Toni left, and Joan and William got together, then broke up. However, the show did bring over a solid audience base from UPN to this redheaded amalgamated stepchild of a network.

First Dawn Ostroff came for Everwood. Then she came for Gilmore Girls and Veronica Mars. Now Girlfriends is getting the Ostroff treatment. Shame on you, CW. Shame!

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Getting into B-School, and Unnecessary Guilt Trips.

In a completely unrelated note, I discovered a crusty scab on the top of my head from the straightening on Saturday. Lovely. I hate getting burned.

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To the topics at hand. I've been studying for the GMAT, because someday I'll actually be going to business school. The GMAT is hard. Like, for reals. I'm a smart lady, but some of this stuff is ridiculous. Since I started my focused concentration a couple weeks ago, I've become less intimidated by test. I'm pretty good at Sentence Correction, since I was the freak who enjoyed my Grammar classes in Middle and Upper school. And my Problem Solving skills aren't so bad either. I have never liked Reading Comprehension, and the GMAT is only solidifying that opinion, but I'll muddle through that section. However, nothing can justify the existence of the Data Sufficiency portion of the exam. Oh my goodness. Here is a Sample Data Sufficiency Question, provided by the Graduate Management Admissions Council:

If a real estate agent received a commission of 6 percent of the selling price of a certain house, what was the selling price of the house?

(1) The selling price minus the real estate agent's commission was $84,600.
(2) The selling price was 250 percent of the original purchase price of $36,000.

(A) Statement (1) ALONE is sufficient, but statement (2) alone is not sufficient.

(B) Statement (2) ALONE is sufficient, but statement (1) alone is not sufficient.

(C) BOTH statements TOGETHER are sufficient, but NEITHER statement ALONE is sufficient.

(D) EACH statement ALONE is sufficient.

(E) Statements (1) and (2) TOGETHER are NOT sufficient.

Pencils down. The answer is (D).

FYI, no calculators are allowed. Also, you cannot skip any questions. They appear one at a time on the computer screen, and you must pick an answer before you can move on to the next one. And you have to do it quickly, because the GMAT is timed, and "there is a severe penalty for not completing" the test. Super!

Side note: one of my Sentence Correction questions today involved King Henry VII and Anne Boleyn. Ugh. I am so sick of The Tudors, and I haven't even seen a full episode. Although with all the multi-platform promotion thrown in my face, it feels like I've endured the entire series. Give it a rest, Showtime. Three straight months of commercials is not going to make me watch your "historical" (as if), oversexed, misogynist, Eurocentric, war-mongering, patriarchal crap, no matter how many times Jonathan Rhys-Meyers screeches, "I'm the king of England!"

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Second part. I went to the Post Office to buy stamps earlier this week, and that is always a to-do with me. I am very picky about the stamps that I like, for various reasons. I was running out of the Longfellow stamps that I had purchased last month, and I liked those. They have pretty shades of blue around the old man's face. So I planned to buy more of them. I waited in the line, and it moved relatively quickly, by Post Office standards. The woman behind the counter showed me collage of the colorful choices available, even though half of them were Xed out.

I selected the Longfellow again, along with DC Comics Super Heroes, With Love and Kisses, Lunar New Year, and Crops of the Americas. Altogether, it was about 100 stamps. The woman asked me if that was all I needed, and I said, Yes. I didn't need any more Post Office paraphernalia. Then she asked me, "Are you sure? What about the Ella Fitzgerald stamps?"

What about them?! I had just picked out almost $40 worth of stamps. I didn't need anymore. Was I supposed to buy them because they have BLACK HERITAGE in bold caps at the top? As if Ella Fitzgerald was only significant to black people, and not to American History in general.

I simply told the woman, No, paid for my stamps, and didn't make a stink. Luckily the woman was black, so I didn't feel the need to scowl at her or make a snippy remark. Though I did wonder, if I had been East Asian, would she have pushed even more Lunar New Year stamps on me? And what if she assumed I was Jewish? Should I have bought the Hanukkah stamps? There weren't any timely Passover ones on display.

I know the woman was probably just being nice, and I was being overly sensitive as usual. But this isn't the only time I've felt obligated to support something because I was black. I don't have any other pertinent examples at the moment. I'm sure I'll think of something later. Ooh, Soul Plane. That was just an embarrassment to everyone involved. More realistically though, Malcolm X. I was being pressured into going to see this movie by some adults in my life when it came out in St. Thomas. I don't have an excuse for not seeing it now. But at the time, I was 10 years old, and the movie was over three hours long. And to my knowledge, Malcolm X did not involve any singing crabs, dancing teapots, or wisecracking genies. So why would I have wanted to see it?

I did watch Kevin Hill, despite critics assuming that black people don't watch black dramas. I'm still not over that show being cancelled. Nor am I over the end of Everwood. I don't care that the series' respective networks technically no longer exist, or that their respective stars Taye Diggs and Treat Williams are both headlining new series that should be airing sometime this year. Strangely enough, Taye and Treat will both be playing doctors in dramatic situations. Because we don't have enough of them on the TV already.