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Editor's Note: Kerry Cohen will give a reading at Powell's City of Books on Wednesday, June 11th, at 7:30 PM. Order
signed editions of Loose Girl
while they last!]
People hate me. I mean really, truly hate me. They don't hate me because I did anything bad to them or their pets or children or people they love. They don't hate me because I don't recycle (I do), or because I wear white after Labor Day (I don't). And they don't hate me for having too much unpleasant and unloving sex, which is what happens in my memoir, Loose Girl. They hate me because I had the nerve to write a book about how badly I needed attention. They hate me because I wrote two books ? two! ? about needing male attention to feel worthwhile. Turns out, this is a pretty awful thing to do.
Loose Girl explores the years, beginning at age eleven, that I desperately attempted to get attention from boys. Before Loose Girl, I published Easy, a young adult novel, much tamer and meant for a younger crowd, but on the same subject. For a while there, I assumed my transgression had been daring to write about my sex life as a woman. But slowly I'm coming to understand that this isn't it at all. I'm beginning to recognize that the unmentionable issue in our culture may not be sex, or mental illness, or addiction. Needing attention is the new taboo.
A few weeks ago, Emily Gould wrote about her own need for attention in her article "Exposed" in The New York Times Magazine. The response was intense. She received well over 1,500 comments, both on the New York Times web site and on her own blog. Most of these people were indignant. They called her narcissistic, self-involved. One poster even called her a c**t. It didn't matter that Emily had outwardly addressed her desire to be noticed through her writing, that here she had admitted to accusing other people of being attention whores while clamoring for the same thing. It didn't matter that she had essentially taken full responsibility for her many mistakes. What mattered was her blatant, disgusting, self-serving need for attention.
Let's assume the old pseudo-psychology standby that what troubles you most about someone else is what troubles you about yourself, you just don't want to own it. Let's assume, then, that lots of people are busy projecting their own desperation for attention onto Emily Gould, onto me, onto various others, and calling it horrible and unconscionable. Okay, let's assume that. But why do we also assume that needing attention is bad?
Is it?
We are covered in tattoos and piercings. Look at me, look at me.
We have boob jobs under low-cut blouses, botox on foreheads. Look at me, look at me.
We watch reality shows where everyone gets to be famous and anyone gets to suck up attention, for simply living their lives. Tons of people want it. They line up for casting calls and send their audition tapes. They strip to their thongs, oil up their chests, have cameras follow them as they walk down the streets of Manhattan in a chicken suit. Look at me, look at me.
But being seen, I mean really, truly seen, for who you are is the ultimate fantasy. Who doesn't want this? Who doesn't want to be known, to be understood? What better expression of love is there? Can we ever really get acknowledged, though, for who we are? We must follow prescriptions for almost anything we want to be in the world, especially as women. We must be pretty, thin, sexy, and smart, but not too much so. We must work hard to make others desire us, but we mustn't let them know how hard we worked. We must never reveal how badly we need to be seen.
Most addiction memoirs articulate this loss. This thing we all had once but then inevitably lose. Had someone just seen her. Had someone just listened to what he needed. Loose Girl is no different. As a child, I turned cartwheels. Look, Mommy. Look at me. My parents hung my scribbled pictures, and then my spelling homework (complete with gold stars), on the fridge. This is good. This is right. We should all get this kind of attention. A great many of us do. But somewhere along the way I learned, as countless others have learned, that I wasn't allowed to ask for it anymore. Somewhere on this path, as my parents got too busy with their own lives, as my needs became more complicated, getting in the way of their own, they pulled away ? or maybe they were pushed. We all do it. All have it done to us. And there we are, alone. Some of us take up knitting and paint-by-numbers or softball and overeating, while others pull the half-shirts from our closets, the high-heeled boots. We try out new lipstick and face creams and cellulite reducers, wondering if this will be the thing that will get us loved again. At some point, we lose sight of what we want the attention for. We only know we still need it. We still need it.
Maybe, just maybe, had the neediness I carried as a child not felt so terribly shameful and ugly ? so taboo ? I wouldn't have walked down the path I did. Maybe if I hadn't spent so much energy trying to hide my need for attention, the need wouldn't have slipped out beneath and become such a blatant, self-harming part of my past. But it was. And so I wrote the story. Is the book evidence of my continued need for attention? Possibly. But if trying to get attention for a story that I honestly believe will help other people is my current crime, I'll accept guilt. Perhaps by doing so, other people will find ways to direct their need for attention in better, more fulfilling ways