Jezebel: steve almond

Steve Almond's Daughter Exposes Him To The Humanity Behind Hollywood Harlots

Jessica — Tue, 06 May 2008 15:40:00 EDT

Steve Almond has had a major, earth shaking revelation. The former daddy blogger has realized that "nubile" "media sluts" are actually ZOMG sensitive human beings! Almond went through 4 decades of his life without realizing his jerk-off material had flesh and blood and feelings. But then, just as he was turning 40, his girlfriend gave him an ultimatum: propose to me or I'm gone. So he proposed! A week after that, the girlfriend announced she was pregnant. Six months later, Steve's now-wife gave birth to a baby girl, Josephine. And she's what made him see women Lindsay Lohan and Paris Hilton as more than the sum of their (naked) parts. It's because he realized they have fathers, too!

Here's Almond internal monologue from Men's Health: Best Life:"Hey, that's someone's daughter! I wonder how her dad feels about that picture in which her boobs are hanging out for the world to see? And I wonder if her dad's behavior in some way contributed to this boob hanging?" Look, I'm sure Michael Lohan was a crap father who didn't make Lindsay feel particularly good about herself. But could Almond get any more self-centered? There's a lot of reasons for a woman to wear a low-cut top beyond simply having daddy issues.

Here's more of Almond on his newfound knowledge:

What I've come to realize is that there are really two people inside me: the Dude Self and the Dad Self. The Dude Self has an evolutionary mandate. Namely, to get his DNA into all available fertile females. This is how I explain the compulsion toward media sluts, who, after all, sow the fantasy that women exist only for the carnal pleasure of men.
But then there's the Dad Self. The Dad Self has to worry about the survival of his wife and offspring. It might be said that his genetic material is heavily mortgaged. He regards women differently, especially if he has a daughter. Now he must think about the kind of world in which he'd like her to grow up, and especially how he'd like other males to treat her, which is to say not as a sexual chew toy, but with kindness and respect.

It's here that my old Dude Self and my brand-new Dad Self come to blows. Because as much as I want to check out Paris and Lindsay, I know I'm harming my daughter by doing so. For one thing, I'm sending her a very clear message: Daddy loves sluts. Be a slut and Daddy will love you. And if you don't believe that a 1-year-old picks up on messages, you've never seen my daughter in action. She is intensely focused on everything in her environment, especially whatever I happen to be looking at.

You know, you can look at, beat off to, and appreciate scantily-clad women without calling them "sluts", denigrating them, and blaming them for their own objectification. It's always guys like this who are most concerned about their daughters' virtue. Their reasoning is twofold: One, we know what assholes guys can be because we were assholes, and two, we don't believe women are bright enough to choose the right path for themselves.

The essay ends with this sentiment: "Josephine can do anything she likes with her life, so long as she asks herself first: Is this behavior worthy of the love I deserve? If she flouts this rule, the failure will have been her parents', not hers."

Bimbo-Proof The Nursery: How To Be Sure Your Daughter Doesn't Turn Out Like Lindsay Lohan [Best Life]

Dooce: Proof That Not All Our Pregnancies Need To End In Abortion?

Moe — Thu, 10 Apr 2008 14:30:00 EDT

The Wall Street Journal peeks inside the — controversial! impassioned! and dare we say even more narcissistic than the regular blogosphere! — world that is the mommy blogosphere today, and first of all, we regret to inform you that self-righteous Babble daddyblogger Steve Almond quit last week in a fit of self-righteousness. And I meant to go trolling for more pointless mommyblog controversies with which to display some sort of snarkpower, but then I got sucked into the life of "stay at home mom or Shit Ass Ho Motherfucker" Dooce. Dooce is the superfamous blog of Heather Armstrong, a former "unemployed drunk" and depressive Hills fan and abundant resorter to profanity who got fired for internet indiscretion once and pretty much is the living blogging manifestation of my greatest fear: that not even expelling a human being from one's vagina is enough to make people like me grow up.

She's had to learn to draw boundaries on what she writes, to avoid hurting loved ones. An "aching and bleeding diatribe" she posted a few years ago against her parents' faith, Mormonism, alienated them so badly that "it was like a bomb had gone off in my family," she says. "My dad didn't speak to me for several months, and my mom was devastated." She took down the posts, thinking, "OK, this is a little bit more powerful than I'd thought it would be," she says.

She's since made up with her parents, who were probably shattered by the realization their religion is a lie, but it's not like they were going to learn that lesson in the afterlife. And in all seriousness, she clearly is something of a grownup, because she has nice pictures on her wall that her roommate isn't responsible for:

Maybe because he's been taking Prozac, or maybe it's because of all that HOT HOT SEX, but when I told Jon what I wanted the wall to look like, he said something like, why aim for perfection when approximation is so much easier? Which is the most romantic thing that has ever come out of his mouth, so I pushed him down on the floor and ripped off all his clothes.

Um yeah, there's lots of stuff like that. Why aim for a perfect kicker when approximation of someone else's less hangover-burdened humor is so much easier? Go hang out with this Dooce lady if you want a side of "thoughts" with your profanity today because I drank enough whiskey to kill a fetus last night.

The Blogger Mom, In Your Face [WSJ]

Dear "Baby Daddy" Steve Almond: Ever Heard Of That Saying,"You Can't Have It All"?

Moe — Wed, 02 Jan 2008 14:00:00 EST

Steve Almond and Jane Roper are two bloggers for the parenting website Babble who recently decided, "in the spirit of blog-raderie", to have a play date and blog about it on their respective blogs. Ruh-oh! "Josie seems so sweet and sociable on her dad's blog, but in reality, I'm sorry to report, she's a total prima donna," wrote Jane of the child Steve allegedly referred to as "high superior queen of the baby blogosphere." Rebutted Steve re Jane's twins: "They do have one major thing going for them: they know how to sit still. Really really well." Then Jane captioned a photo: "Note how my girls are sweetly fawning all over [Josie] while all she cares about is trying to get into a more flattering pose for the camera." Ha ha ha! So it's pretty obvious, the "play date from hell" was a joke destined to poke fun at the way Blog Age mommies and daddies find in their children warm vessels onto which they can once and for all project all the narcissism and greed they hid so shamefully as singles.

While...simultaneously...trying to get hits for their blogs? Okay, something, whatever. Here's what we know about Steve Almond: he has spent a lot of time bemoaning the merciless, nuance-less unrelenting meanness of the blogosphere. He has spent a lot of time doing that because his editor alerted him to the fact that Gawker had posted a bizarre collection of emails he had written to Oprah. He wrote a book called Candyfreak. Full disclosure: I read Candyfreak because my old literary agent suggested I model my own book proposal on that book. Candyfreak was about candy. My book proposal was about capitalism. It's all the same shit, right? Packaging and cool fonts and satisfactillicious content? Cause we're all just tryin to get the hits? But wait, it can't just be about the hits? I mean, as you yourself wrote, Steve:

By appealing to our most childish impulses — and with the cowardly consent of the left — the right-wing of this country has managed to Gawk the political discourse. This is why matters of policy go uncovered, while gossip and gaffes and cleavage and haircuts and (most of all) emotionally convincing ad hominems determine the outcome of elections. If this country ever hopes to rouse itself from the moral torpor marked by the Bush years, we are going to have to end our addiction to Gawking, and face up to the common crises of state.

Hey, point taken, Steve and Jane. I'll stop Gawking at you, if you do like responsible adults and write some posts that explain in plain English how to pull out of Iraq and solve the health care crisis. I'll totally link to them on my blog, and send you hits, and as an added bonus, we'll save the world! You should care about that, right? You're the ones with children.

Boring Squared [Babble]
Why I'm No Longer A Fan Of Baby Daddy [Babble]