Oprah Writer Tries To Debunk Reckless Idiot Male Psyche

Jessica — Wed, 02 Jul 2008 16:20:00 EDT

When I was thirteen, one of my best friends was a semi-professional rollerblader. I know, how swooningly mid-90s, but we were all impressed by his death-defying stunts. Well, some people were impressed. I was mostly terrified. I recall vividly the summer afternoon when he decided that he would launch himself out of his second story bedroom window, onto the trampoline below. There were maybe five of us present that day, and while the rest of my friends cheered him wholeheartedly, I sat in white-knuckled silence, convinced that he was going to maim himself. I also remember thinking: fucking boys. No girl would be stupid enough to jump out of her own window, even if there were a trampoline below.

In this month's O: The Oprah Magazine, short story writer Jim Shepard attempts to explain exactly why "Men Do Crazy Things." "For all our gender stereotyping about the way men fetishize the rational," Shepard writes, "here's one of the more notable things about us as a group: We often seem to make bad choices. The kind of choices that make our loved ones cluster in little informal discussion groups afterward, trying to figure out what on earth their boy was thinking."

Jim describes his own jump out of a second story window, writing, "There was no 'What are you, crazy?' or "Why do we have to jump out of your window?'" the boys, safety be damned, just jumped. Later, Shephard says he believes that men are physically reckless because "it's a way of protesting, and subverting, a feeling of individual impotence, perhaps: I'm not helpless. Look I can shoot myself in the foot..

Which is not to say that men are the only ones who pull idiot daredevil stunts — they just do it in greater numbers. According to the National Center For Health Statistics, accidents (unintentional injuries are the third leading cause of death for men, and they don't crack the top three for women. In fact, of the 117,809 accidental deaths in 2005, 72,050 were male. For those of you computing at home, that's 61%.

So does Shepard's theory hold water? Are men more reckless than women because it's a way of making themselves feel powerful? Do they hold onto that teenage notion of invincibility for longer?

What Men Think [Oprah Magazine]
Men's Health [CDC]

Oprah Writer Asks: "[Are] Jews and Christians Incompatible?"

Jessica — Wed, 23 Jan 2008 16:00:00 EST

The "Love Issue" of Oprah Magazine — 22 days until Valentine's, ladies — has several essays under the heading "Love, the Great Adventure" about lasting romance. In one, O Henry prize winner Sheila Kohler, an Anglican, writes about her mostly-happy interfaith marriage to a Jewish man (the lovebirds are pictured at left). But her union is not without warts, and Kohler bravely exposes them all. She talks about the minor fights they had "over who would do the dishes and how they would be done," but then gets into messier territory, like her complaint that he doesn't say "I love you" enough. Then, as the kids say, Kohler goes there. "Did the six million dead Jews have to come up quite so frequently?" she ponders. Not only that, in an admitted moment of rage, Kohler shouts at her husband "You're just a stingy Jew!" He later comes back with a comment about how all the pork eating must have diminished her brain function, which leads Kohler to wonder, "Had I married a racist? Worse still, had I discovered that in my heart of hearts I was a racist...Were men and women so very different? Were Jews and Christians incompatible?"

Kohler doesn't really answer her own question (she ends the essay discussing how she and the hub resolved their kitchen issues, but doesn't really come back to the Jew business), but as a Jew who lives in sin with a Protestant, it definitely got me thinking. My boyfriend and I make joking comments all the time about our stereotypical differences: Whenever he gets mock-offended by my filthy mouth, I always tell him to stop being such an "uptight WASP." And sometimes, when I burrow my face into his armpit, he'll comment about my "pointy Jew nose." Is our banter really masking some deep-seeded prejudices we hold about each other's backgrounds? Or are we enriching each other through religious differences? Does it not matter at all since neither of us has actually stepped foot in a house of worship since the Clinton Administration? So many questions dislodged from one little Oprah essay! Just like Kohler, I don't have the easy answers to these questions, but I will say that my boy is so WASPy that he puts mayonnaise on everything. If that's not an insurmountable cultural difference, I think we're probably okay.

Sheila Kohler Official Website
The Love Issue [O: The Oprah Magazine]

Jezebel: oprah magazine

Oprah Writer Tries To Debunk Reckless Idiot Male Psyche

Oprah Writer Asks: "[Are] Jews and Christians Incompatible?"