he/they

They built a concentration camp.

Here's the thing. Curt and Owen flirt pretty much nonstop throughout A1P1 (especially if you believe Curt did know it was Owen in disguise, which I'm 50/50 on). And it seems really easy for Curt. He has that swagger, that confidence, the smile, its all very genuinely charming and you can definitely see why he and Owen got together. He seems not just comfortable in his skin, but thriving. He has someone who knows who he is. He doesn't have to put on an act with this person.

But in Doing This (and in the Casino scene, which I did screenshots for last week), it's all the most obscenely awkward thing in the world. There's I dunno 15 seconds or so where Curt looks distressed over thinking that Tatiana wants to *ahem* do it. But in the space of a just a few frames he goes from that look of pure panic to this incredibly cheesy Walmart book bin romance cover guy.

Its a gender performance that feels very noticably off. Its like he snaps into a role. The poses, the mugging, it's all very.... rehearsed. And maybe it worked with women who aren't spies, and maybe he was better at pretending before he lost Owen, but he is very obviously pretending.

And in this specific instance I don't think it's an issue of losing his rizz (as the kids call it). He's trying to act the way he thinks a straight man would act. Trying on this version of masculinity that simply does not fit him. And the more he tries to contort himself to make it fit, the less stereotypically masculine he comes across. Whereas in A1P1, when he was really flirting with someone he was really attracted to, that came across as very stereotypically, effortlessly masculine.

1. There are a few things I check and a few questions I ask literally just to figure out if you can play the game and get along with others in a professional setting. Part of the job I interview for is talking to people, and we work in teams. So if you can’t “play the game” a tiny bit, it’s not going to work. Playing the game includes:

- Why do you want to work here? (just prove that you googled the company, tell me like 1 thing about us, I just want to know that you did SOME kind of preparation for this interview)

- Are you wearing professional clothing? I don’t need a suit just don’t show up in a ratty t-shirt and sweatpants.

- Are you able to speak respectfully and without dropping f-bombs all the time? Not because I’m offended but because I don’t want to be reported to HR if you wind up on my team.

- Can you follow simple directions in an interview?

2. Stop telling me protected information. I don’t want to know about what drugs or medications you’re on, I don’t want to know about you being sick, I don’t want to know if you’re planning to have children soon, I don’t want to know anything about your personal life other than “can you do the job?” 

3. When we ask, “What questions do you have for me?” here are my favorites I’ve heard: - What does the day-to-day look like for a member of your team?

- If one of your team members was not performing up to his usual standard, what steps would you take to correct that?

- What can I start doing now to accelerate my learning process in this job?

- What are some reservations you have about me as a candidate? (be ready for this emotionally….it will REALLY help you in the future, and I’ve had people save themselves from a No after this, but can be hard to hear)

- In your opinion, what skills and qualities does the ideal candidate for this job possess?

- What advice would you give to a new hire in this position/someone who wanted to break into this industry, as someone who has worked here for a while?

like, I think a lot of people currently posting the most cringe takes about rap right now would very much agree that Racism Is Bad and probably even acknowledge that rap has been and is still widely maligned and devalues for racist reasons.

but that last step, acknowledging that your personal tastes and interests are also influenced by systemic racism, is where a LOT of people stumble. it's very easy to assume that because you consider yourself against racism, then your tastes and interests cannot possibly be at all informed by racist. if you're a white American, that's simply extremely unlikely to be true.

speaking from personal experience, I had to Work to decenter whiteness in my media tastes. when I was like 19 I listened to a podcast where a white Jewish man talked about keeping a spreadsheet of the books he read to make sure he was reading a roughly equal number of men and women, and I started doing the same thing to track how many authors of color I was reading. at the time I took pride in my belief that I was reading diversely, but when the year ended I was shocked to discover that people of color had written barely a quarter of the books I'd read. I had been giving myself way too much credit while still unintentionally prioritizing white authors, because white authors were the ones I knew best. so I started making an extremely conscious effort to seek out books by authors of color, both fiction and nonfiction, that sounded like my kind of shit.

music was extremely similar. I grew up a little white girl in a very white city in a very white state; nobody was offering me an education in rap or r&b or soul or hip hop. as an young adult there were definitely some Black artists I liked, like Janelle Monáe, but I had to take the initiative of seeking out more artists to find out who I fuck with. you're not going to like everybody, which is fine, but are you even giving anyone a chance? are you even looking?