Dawn's Big Date, Part 4
Chapter 10
It’s nearly time for Dawn’s first real Date with Lewis and Mary Anne has spent the whole day bombarding her with magazine articles about what to do on dates. Dawn, as I would, felt like screaming, “Mary Anne, is *anything* about me okay the way it is?” God, I’m so pissed off with Mary Anne, to the point where I don’t even care about the sensitive-my-ass clause anymore. And you know what I’ve just realised? Dawn didn’t even ask her for this so-called “advice”! Any of it! This is what happened at the beginning. Actual quotes:
*Mary Anne walks into Dawn’s room and sees her reading fashion magazines*
Mary Anne: “Wow! Dawn, I’ve never seen you look through something like this. What’s up?”
Dawn: “I was just curious.”
Mary Anne: “I was looking through this issue at Stacey’s house, and I saw an outfit and a hairstyle that would be great on you.”
Dawn never told Mary Anne not to give her advice, but she never asked her to give advice, either. Mary Anne just barged in and put in her two penny-worth - which was pulled completely out of her ass - and Dawn felt like she had to listen because Mary Anne is pseudo-married. Only yes means yes, you pushy asshole.
Mary Anne once again tells Dawn that her outfit isn’t good enough. Dawn again points out that Mary Anne isn’t following the stupid rules, Mary Anne again says that SHE gets to be liked for who she is, and I do my stab-eyes-punch-out-and-jump-on-her-bloodied-body routine. And then I remember that Mary Anne doesn’t actually think that Logan is happy with her the way she is (see: Chapter 3.) Like aibheaog (by the way, if you're reading this, how do you pronounce your name?) I hope that “Dawn will be happily comfortable in the future, while Mary Anne squeezes her feet into a pair of uncomfortable heels so she can look good while making a pot roast for the hubby, only to have him divorce her ass when she puts on fifteen pounds.”
It turns out that Mary Anne’s fashion advice runs contrary to the magazines she’s been force-feeding Dawn all afternoon, so Dawn decides to trust the magazines over Mary Anne. Mary Anne thinks Dawn is to blame for this, rather than the person who fed Dawn conflicting information (that was PULLED OUT OF HER ASS!) in the first place.
It’s past six o’clock, but for some reason they’re going to the movie before dinner. What is with these people and late-ass meals? My stomach would either be growling louder than the damn movie soundtrack (very attractive) or I’d fill up on snacks and not want dinner. And then it turns out that this isn’t just any movie, it’s a long-ass one that doesn’t let out until ten. Very well-planned.
I’m not going to recap the cringe-making details of this date. Let’s just say that Dawn is nervous and trying too hard, taking the magazines way literally* and screwing it up; Mary Anne is picking her to pieces every two seconds (actually pinching her when she says the “wrong” thing), making her even more nervous; and Lewis is thinking “I wish I could call up that flight attendant from my flight who said there are fifty ways to leave your lover and ask what they are.”
*Although some of the advice is just plain bad, like Always use the person’s name. Do you have any idea how irritating that is? Before I left NZ I occasionally shopped at the bookshop where I used to work, and sometimes encountered my pompous, smarmy ex-boss. He forgot my name on two occasions (one time the person who was my immediate supervisor reminded him in this fantastically “duh!” voice) and then after he was reminded, he used my name in every goddamn sentence. It was incredibly annoying and made him sound even more blatantly insincere than he already did. Maybe he read this book. That would also explain why his buddies used to read my name off my name badge when I worked there and be all “How are you today, Kakeochi_umai?” in this smug voice like “I know how to make the little people cream themselves!” I wanted to pierce the artery in their necks with one of those message spikes, except the purpose of that artery is to deliver blood and oxygen to the brain, so in order for that to work they would have actually had to have brains.
Speaking of douchebags with no brain, Mary Anne again blames Dawn and makes the whole thing about herself: “The least you can do is thank me. I tried as hard as I could to make this date a success. It’s not my fault that you did everything wrong. I did the best I could.” The Kind and Sensitive One, ladies and gentlemen. Dawn finally tells Bitchface to take her stupid advice and shove it up her ass and I jump up and down cheering.
Chapter 11
It’s just before the next BSC meeting after the disaster date. Dawn waits five minutes after Mary Anne leaves because “I had decided never to talk to Mary Anne, the know-it-all Date Wrecker, again.” Yeah, that’s pretty much how I’d feel too. The other members excitedly grill Dawn about how it went (they purposely didn’t talk about it in the cafeteria, which is good because this moment sucks enough for Dawn as it is but at least in this case she knows it’ll stay within the walls of Claudia’s room. Who knew there’d be an upside to the fact that the Cult members never talk to outsiders?)
Dawn and Bitchface each tell their version of what went on. Mary Anne says Dawn’s “bizarre getups” (her words) were part of the reason the date didn’t go well. Mary Anne? What YOU think of Dawn’s outfits doesn’t matter. In fact, what Lewis thinks of them doesn’t matter, either. The ONLY thing wrong with Dawn dressing that way is that SHE doesn’t really like to. If Dawn truly likes the Madonna style and Lewis rejects her for it, the answer isn’t for Dawn to wear different clothes, it’s for her to wait until she finds a guy who WILL accept her style. And how do you even KNOW Lewis is violently opposed to that style, anyway? Maybe he LIKES it, or maybe he’s not keen on it but unlike SOME people he doesn’t make a hugeass deal out of what people wear.
I get really annoyed with Suzanne Weyn when Dawn starts getting all conspiracy theorist and says things like “Mary Anne deliberately picked the saddest movie of all time so that my makeup would run”. NO, GODDAMMIT!!!! Dawn is right to be mad at Mary Anne; don’t make her sound irrational by having her say shit like that!!!!
Stacey brings up the whole “oops, the Hills are accidentally emotionally abusing their son” thing. I have no firsthand knowledge or experience of dealing with emotional abuse, so I’ll leave this part up to more knowledgeable members to critique. Stacey proposes speaking to the Hills about it. For once, some of the members (Jessi and Claudia) are worried about whether it’s their place to say anything.
The brainstorming session is interrupted by a call from MILF Barrett. Dawn is the only one free, so Mary Anne and Dawn do that whole “tell X to tell Y...” thing.
The other members, providing a good argument for that stereotype about women and multi-tasking, hit on a nifty way to brainstorm about the Hills after the meeting and get Dawn and Mary Anne speaking to each other at the same time. They take turns calling the house and asking whoever gets the phone to get the other person to pick up too. Person B cannot refuse to get on the line because refusing to participate in a Cult activity is the worst kind of Suppressive Person behaviour and is probably punishable by a public stoning in which all the neighbourhood kids participate. Mary Anne proves she’s not the brightest bulb in the box:
Kristy: something like “Tell Dawn to pick up too.”
Mary Anne (actual quote): “You can tell her yourself”.
Um, how, exactly? I don’t think Mary Anne knows how landline phones work. I’m proud to say that my girl does have a basic knowledge of telephones.
So they brainstorm about the Hills. Dawn suggests that Norman talk to a teacher he likes. (Kristy and Dawn debate about whether they should contact the teacher, and again, I’ll leave it up to more knowledgeable members to comment on that.) Stacey carries on her initial idea of exercising together rather than singling Norman out. She notices that the Hills were going to the gym the day she was sitting for them, so it’s not like they don’t work out themselves. And, I mean, I get that sometimes you just want to go to that pole dancing class, but there's no law saying you can't do that AND do a workout video with your kid. Claudia suggests encouraging Sarah and Norman to do stuff together. Mallory and Jessi’s personality traits offer a suggestion each. Dawn says to be careful not to be one more person who’s up in Norman’s business. Of course she’s thinking about her own experience with Mary Anne, and the chapter closes with Dawn deciding to ditch the critical, overbearing ball and chain and see Lewis on her own.
Chapter 12
When Mary Anne arrives at the Hills’, they have tacked a piece of paper to the fridge basically saying “HEY NORMAN YOU AREN’T ALLOWED TO EAT ANY OF OUR STASH OF CHOCOLATE AND CHIPS AND COOKIES AND CANDY AND CAKE AND SODA BECAUSE YOU’RE A FATTY FAT FAT NYAH NYAH NYAH”. No, seriously, they’ve made a list of foods he’s not allowed to eat, but they won’t, like, stop buying those things and eating them in front of him or anything. Fuck you, Hills.
Mary Anne tries to do some of the things the other girls suggested. She starts with Jessi’s dancercise tape and, I mean, I’m no fan of gender stereotypes, but it doesn’t take a rocket scientist to know that self-conscious boy + traditionally feminine activity ain’t gonna be an easy sell. I bet a martial arts workout tape would’ve been a hit. He wrote about karate and judo in his Super Norman letter to Brittany the Chipette, so he’d probably get a kick out of doing the moves for real, and like I said, it’s a great way to vent your anger at people who’ve been dicks to you.
She then decides to try Mallory’s idea about making a picture book about a fat superhero, and, I mean, unlike me, who wouldn’t even tell my therapist about the content of my Super Kakeochi_umai fantasies, Norman has shared his Super Norman fantasies with Brittany the Chipette, so I could possibly see him going for it. Except that Mary Anne is a dumbass and tries to draw it for him despite being unable to draw worth shit, so she ends up with a picture only slightly less insulting than the one Sarah runs in and tacks to the fridge, consisting of a pig with the words “I’m Fat Becuz I Eat Two Much”. (For those who have forgotten, Sarah is nine. Maybe she and Claudia have more in common than I thought.) Mary Anne makes Sarah take it down and apologise to her brother. Oh wait, this is a Babysitters Club book, so what actually happens is that Mary Anne begs Sarah to take it down and then does nothing when Sarah refuses and invokes the Grand High Abusers.
My brain BSODs for a third time when Sarah reports that “My mother says our family has to work together to help Norman with his problem.” I gibber incoherently for a few minutes while my head feels like it is going to explode. This book is not good for my blood pressure.
OK. Hills. The nutritionists probably DID tell you to work together to help Norman, but this would have been followed by sentences such as “Get rid of the fuckloads of junk food in the house” or “Exercise WITH Norman instead of singling him out.” Not “Gang up on him for more effective bullying”.
After lather, rinse and doormatting with another picture, Mary Anne asks NORMAN why he isn’t standing up for himself. Before I address the jaw-dropping DOUBLE hypocrisy of this, I’m going to say a bit (by which I mean another novella) about this attitude in general.
Every bullied kid probably had at least one well-meaning but stunningly clueless adult tell them to just stand up for themselves. As with Claudia’s stupidity in Chapter 6, this was well-meaning. The adults in my life didn’t want me to have to endure the abuse and bullshit dished out by my classmates, and since they couldn’t stop the bullying they tried to tell me how to stop it. And if you can do something to change bad things in your life, it is empowering.
But, as any bullied kid will know, it’s not that easy. As with Norman and his eating habits, if it was that easy, did they not think I would have done it already? Did they actually think that I was able to stand up for myself but just chose not to because I enjoyed being bullied so much? At any rate, the message I got was that it was my fault for handling it wrong. And it wasn’t. It is NOT the bullied kid’s responsibility to stand up for themselves, it is the bullies’ responsibility not to be little shitcunts. Period.
This is why I really hate stories that make it look so easy to stand up for yourself. These authors may think they’re giving us hope, but for me it just reinforced the crap I was getting from adults about how if I’d only handle it right, the bullying would stop and the bullies would be my bestest buddies and everything would be hearts and flowers and rainbows and bunnies. In short, these plotlines made me feel even more like there was something wrong with me.
And then there’s the blatant hypocrisy. It’s one thing for, say, Kristy to take that attitude, as she finds it easy to stand up for herself and thus might not understand that some kids find it hard the way she finds tact hard, Claudia finds schoolwork hard and Stacey finds keeping her legs closed hard. But Mary freakin’ Anne cries when somebody looks at her the wrong way, so you’d think she of all people would understand. I love how it’s OK for HER to be shy and meek but she gets to criticise Dawn and Norman respectively for those same things. And by “love” I mean I want to get all the shy and meek people of this world together and do this.
And what’s REALLY shitty about this is that in this case, Mary Anne isn’t talking about Norman’s parents or the kids at school, whom she has no power over. She is talking about a child SHE IS IN CHARGE OF. She is the authority figure here, she can and should discipline Sarah, but she wimped out. Twice. So Mary Anne isn’t just blaming the victim, she’s shirking her own responsibility and passing the damn buck onto the victim.
And, in fact, Mary Anne’s doormatting makes it even harder for Norman to stand up for himself. The authority figures in his home are constantly telling him that he has no right to and now Mary Anne is giving him the same message by backing down whenever Sarah says “Our parents said I have to do it”. Before Norman can stand up for himself, he has to believe that he has a right not to have to put up with that crap, and by bowing to Sarah’s bullshit, Mary Anne is giving Norman the exact opposite message. And then blaming him, because she is a shitty babysitter and a shitty, hypocritical person.
And of course this is shown as the right thing to do. Mary Anne’s fuckery inspires Norman to rip up the pictures and tell Sarah that he will do the same to any other pictures she draws. Sarah expects Mary Anne to punish Norman for this because she’s used to her dickhead parents and limp noodle babysitters letting her get away with everything, and Mary Anne smiles smugly as she says “I guess you’d better not draw any more pictures of him”. You just got out-assertived by a downtrodden seven-year-old, Mary Anne. That’s not something to be proud of.
Mary Anne encourages Norman to tell Mr and Mrs Hill how their bullshit makes him feel, because we’re still running with this whole thing about the Hills just not knowing that when you say nasty things to someone it hurts their feelings. If that’s the case, I really want Mr Hill to get fired by his biggest clients for walking into a meeting and saying this.
Mary Anne gets the dancercise tape again and is like “You know what, let’s just rock out to this thing. Even the Prime Minister of Great Britain does it!” Even Sarah can’t resist that, and the kids end up enjoying the tape together. Mary Anne realises that Norman thrived once everyone got off his damn back...hey, wait, maybe Dawn’s date would have gone better if Mary Anne wasn’t breathing down her neck the whole time too! Mary Anne realises that while she was sensitive my ass (well, she says she “hadn’t meant to”), that doesn’t make it OK.