I always do it for a boy
If ego stroking is a crime, I am in for life
I have had this essay in me for years. I wouldn’t let it out because I hoped age would bring me intrinsic motivation to keep my private thoughts private. My frontal lobe has long since matured. Modesty never found me.
I am sitting in a cafe in Paris, high on an amount of sugar and carbs my lean body is not accustomed to, and against my therapist’s advice to switch off and not do any writing here, I am going to reveal a secret.
When I honestly reflect on the life choices, hobbies and goals I have pursued with what I am being told is an enviable passion to the average person sleep-walking through life, I realise that so much of it was motivated by the desire to impress some boy.
In my unfuckable hate-nerd days, I was engulfed by a desire for boys that was never granted release. I reckoned that if I couldn’t have these men, I could become them1. My love for a boy in black skinny jeans led me to become an emo goth. A boy in a band inspired me to take up electric guitar lessons (which I promptly dropped; I am a philistine, and I don’t like music). I remember splashing in a pool on a family holiday and another one telling me how irresistible he found pleated skirts. I still wear them religiously, 15 years later.
These are innocent examples, but these downstairs Stella to upstairs Stella lobbying efforts have influenced major life and career decisions over the years.
I embrace the theory that all life energy is libidinal energy (I think Freud said it, google it losers I am on holidays!!1). In practice, this means I pursue goals that are unrelated to sex and love using the energy reserved for the biological imperative to perpetuate the species. So, I practice and apply myself literally as if humankind depended on it. Because to the subconscious animal in me, it does. Stella, you either clean up your writing and step up your briefings or the last human will die along with your career aspirations.
I was always into politics and would have joined the Labour Party organically. Did it help that one of the most gorgeous men I have ever met worked for an MP and sneaked me into the House of Commons when I was in uni? Did I withstand the hundreds of rejections I got before getting my first job in Parliament because I wanted a job that involved me dashing around an ancient building, bumping into my favourite type of neurotic British nerd in a suit? Can we end this session early Doctor; Some subconscious motives should remain so, I’ll skip unveiling this one.
What I can tell you for sure is that I am not just a horny person. I am also a spiteful one. So, while the need to impress men is always present, the desire to compete with them often raises its ugly head. I will never forget the look of pity on my university boyfriend's face when he mentioned the name of the then-leader of the Labour Party, and I sheepishly responded, ‘Who’s that?’. I have been compensating ever since.
I have examples of personal/professional achievements corresponding to men to fill a whole book (watch out for that debut novel/memoir). Right before I started doing political commentating, I dated an older man (tastefully older, not creepily so)— a former cabinet minister (not from Westminster, stop googling). I would watch his interviews when he was my age and a rising star. Seeing how well he performed caused me not just emotional anguish but deep physical pain. How could he be so good, so young? Why couldn’t I? I didn’t know where my lust for him ended and my crippling unrequited ambition began.
When the former cabinet minister let me go, I tortured myself with fantasies of the woman he would end up with. Maybe one with a Times column. One who knows what to do with her cutlery at the end of a meal and whose please and thank yous sound natural and intuitive, not rehearsed and forced. One that reserves her personal anecdotes for her published autofiction and would never stoop so low as to exploit her private life for a newsletter with a minuscule distribution. Her agent wouldn’t let her anyway (she obviously has one of those). She’d be just as pretty as me but more successful and poised.
This last paragraph is bait for the trads to tell me I don’t have time left and need to forget these high-powered 10s and settle with a mythical nice quiet man (is this a euphemism for men who want to date out of their league?) that has literally never been on offer for women of my type and who, even if existent, would probably vomit from anxiety if he found himself naked in a room with me- a Greek valkyrie.
What the amateur dating coaches in my comments don’t appreciate is that for people with ambition, humour, energy and overdeveloped language skills, a bit of competition with our romantic interests in our chosen fields is sexy. The men I date probably love the fact that I look up to them enough to DREAM (PLOT EVEN) of surpassing them.
One of the reasons I don’t kiss and tell more explicitly is that I need these talented, powerful men to continue dating me, even if it means the slow death of my hope to have a safe and stable family life in this foreign country.
That is because as much as I value family and partnership, I also acknowledge the zest for life in me and the powerful creative force that wants to be expressed. Being rejected triggers my insecurities and awakens my inner unfuckable hate nerd who will not rest till every last person on the imaginary referendum in my head rates me a 10.
There is this passage by Caitlin Moran in ‘How to build a girl’ that I keep returning to:
Since I met you, I feel like I can see the operating system of the world - and it is unrequited love. That is why everyone's doing everything. Every book, opera house, moon shot and manifesto is here because someone, somewhere, lit up silent when someone else came into the room and then quietly burned when they didn't notice them. On the foundation of the billion kisses we never had, I built you this opera house, baby. I shot the president because I didn't know what to say to you. I hoped you'd notice. I hoped you'd notice me. We turn our unsaid things into our life's work.
I read this and think about the dazzling (at least to this moth of a woman) men who resist me. I don’t hold it against them; inadvertently, they may be pushing me towards achieving loftier goals.
My top productivity hack? Get your heart broken by a man who works harder and better than you. Never mind the gym, get your ass to work.
classic BPD, I know, sit down Redditt users, it is also typical teenager behaviour
Torn between hoping you find relationship happiness because I hope that for everyone and hoping you don’t so you can keep generating great writing.
It's commonly said that men only wage war, build monuments, and explore space in order to maybe get laid, and guys don't push back against that (never heard "We built the Pyramids, but only for the fellow male gaze"). So why do you think it's taboo for women to say vice versa? Is it a progressive counter to the idea that women's thoughts and lives revolve around men?