March Issue
Melissa Çevikel
March
Birthdays: A reminder that your days in the world are finite, or a celebration of life? However you view birthdays, they come around every year and there isn’t anything anyone can do about them. Whether they remind you of a loved one you miss, create an opportunity to come together with old friends or force you to reflect on what you have and haven’t done in the years that have already passed, birthdays—even if not your own—rarely go unnoticed. And while there are birthdays that tend to be forgotten and celebrated in texts that come too late, certain birthdays never just go by, and you’re constantly reminded of them. After all, there are people who post birthday countdowns on social media, repost every birthday celebration post dedicated to them and ask you for planning advice and to RSVP 6 months in advance. But what is so bad about that? Why would one’s desire to celebrate their existence and presence on earth be bothersome to anyone?
The media has created a culture around being “cool” and nonchalant about things: whether it’s birthdays, weddings or loss. Women are disproportionately affected by this because the pre-existing stereotype of women being overly emotional beings coincides with this trope. But how has this affected the way we view celebrations, especially those of our own?
Growing up, I always wanted to be cool and mysterious (as did many young girls who grew up in the generation of Bella Swan from Twilight and Jade from Victorious). Being nonchalant about certain things was portrayed as a defining characteristic of a “cool girl.” The girls in the media who were portrayed as such tended to be straight to the point, brutally honest and even sometimes borderline rude. While for most of the viewers, those weren't the traits that were picked up, striving to be nonchalant and indifferent ended up sticking with many.
The counter-stereotype, however, of girls who are emotionally attached to the most insignificant life events and who are very type A, unfortunately turned out to be exactly true for me—and someone I absolutely didn’t want to be. A defining moment for the nonchalant cool girl stereotype was the rediscovery of the “cool girl monologue” from Gone Girl by popular culture. In this monologue, Amy Dunne, the “cool girl” and presumably the villain of the story, says:
“Being the Cool Girl means I am a hot, brilliant, funny woman who adores football, poker, dirty jokes, and burping, who plays video games, drinks cheap beer, loves threesomes and anal sex, and jams hot dogs and hamburgers into her mouth like she’s hosting the world’s biggest culinary gang bang while somehow maintaining a size 2, because Cool Girls are above all hot. Hot and understanding. Cool Girls never get angry; they only smile in a chagrined, loving manner and let their men do whatever they want. Go ahead, shit on me, I don’t mind, I’m the Cool Girl.”
While this was arguably said as a critique of the male gaze and the women who try to fit into it, it led to many users on social media proudly sharing their experiences of trying to fit the “Cool Girl trope,” and others then deciding to embrace these characteristics. This revolutionized the idea of a cool and nonchalant female character, which many young women then tried to embody.
Though not everyone went to these extremes, the simultaneous rise of outspoken misogyny due to the popularization of, for lack of a better word, figures like Andrew Tate made many women rethink their attitudes towards many things. As a result, many women stopped being openly excited about things, not to seem “cooler” or more “appealing” to men, but simply to spare themselves from the mocking young girls they are often faced with when they express joy and excitement.
Turkish author Buket Uzuner coined the term “girl joy” (kız neşesi) in an interview she did with Medyascope Plus. The author stated:
“Girl joy is something that only girls can have. You shouldn’t let anyone—not your son, not your husband, not your father, not your partner, anyone—deprive you of it. Only girls possess this and it is what keeps up the fire, the energy and the light in the world.”
However, girl joy is oftentimes conflicted by the previously mentioned “cool” characters, who are more often than not written by men, portraying the “cool girl” as a much more desirable and toned-down version of women. We can see an example of how this idea of indifferent women manifests itself in how birthday celebrations are and how women who are excited about them are criticized.
Celebrations, in general, have traditionally been associated with women. This is partially because of the belief, as suggested by Talcott Parsons, that women’s emotional nature makes them suitable for nurturing and caretaking. While this has created a narrative of a responsible woman who is organized and essentially a living planner responsible for reminding men of their responsibilities, other narratives have simultaneously emerged.
80s pop-hits like Girls Just Want to Have Fun by Cyndi Lauper created the image of what many interpreted as a careless woman who just wanted to party and have fun while ignoring her responsibilities. In reality, the song and the music video depicted women breaking free from the male gaze and living the life they wish to live, while not assuming the responsibilities and roles imposed on them by the men in their lives and the patriarchy.
One of those responsibilities, as previously mentioned, has been planning—events in particular. In office parties like in Love Actually or Bridget Jones, weddings in 27 Dresses and Bridesmaids and simply house parties like in Clueless, women planning events have often been portrayed as obsessive and overly emotional. Inevitably, when combined with the trends in misogyny, this has made many women not want to immerse themselves in the world of such stereotypical obsessiveness and remain nonchalant, even if it’s about the celebration of their own being.
Birthday parties—especially self-planned ones—tend to have negative connotations attached to them. Whenever a celebrity throws a birthday party, we can see the comment section flooded with people discussing how insensitive the celebration is, considering there are many pressing world issues that need to be addressed. The ostentatious celebration of one’s birth seems quite selfish in the backdrop of these realities, especially if initiated by oneself. But when we think about it, most of the time, only women’s birthdays are treated this way. Male celebrities can be caught in clubs and be interviewed, slipping in and out of consciousness while exploiting the women around them and get a headline that simply reads “X’s Birthday Celebration!” On the other hand, women and girls, whether in the public eye or not, often get criticized for “obsessing over themselves” enough to take the time to organize and throw birthday parties for themselves.
Of course, there is a nihilistic view on birthdays that we can’t ignore, and some of us even subscribe to it. Getting older by a year may not be something worth celebrating, and it will come around every year, so there really isn’t much need to go all out on festivities when it does come around. But there’s also the undeniable reality that we aren’t ever promised another birthday in the unpredictability of life, so there isn’t much harm in celebrating one's existence in a world where it’s gradually becoming harder to find things to celebrate.
While at first this urge to be indifferent about birthday parties started off as an act, I soon realized that as years passed, I really was getting less and less excited about my birthday coming up and getting to celebrate it with my loved ones. I now admire the people who are seen as egocentric for planning out their birthday parties six months in advance with appreciation and even longing.
And while this is a very niche example, we can all think about things that were deemed to be manifestations of egocentrism and narcissism, but in reality were simply things girls and women enjoyed investing their time in. We should be more critical of how we approach and internalize the narratives presented to us by the media and public figures and question how they affect our attitudes towards day-to-day life. Photo source: Lawrence Schiller, 1962 on flickr