Previously, Mia filmed an interview with Anton about what he was thankful for, and she also fucked Wes in a closet or something.
Calendar Girl (November): Chapter 6
The chapter opens up with Mia leading Wes and their film crew through Manhattan because Mia has an idea for her segment, but she won’t tell anyone what it is. I’m sure that’ll be great, because thus far her TV-making prowess worthy of six figures has included getting a baseball player to say he’s thankful for baseball and a musician to say he goes by the name “The Latin Lov-ah” because he is Latin and he loves women. I shit you not. Mia is god-fucking-awful at interviews yet this is actually how this 12-novella story is ending. What a journey.
If Mia didn’t already have a name for her TV segment (it’s “Living Beautiful” in case you forgot, which would be understandable since this doesn’t really mean anything), I’d like to suggest “Audrey Carlan Has Probably Never Been To New York”.
A cornucopia of scents wafted through the air from different street vendors selling everything from hot dogs, to churros, to pizza.
I’ve lived in New York for over four years and I have never once seen a street vendor selling pizza.
Mia arrives at Rockefeller Center in front of the ice skating rink, announces that this is perfect, and my soul dies a little bit as I realize Mia is making six figures for her brilliant intuition to think to… make a tv segment about touristy New York bullshit.
And thus begins a chapter of Mia interviewing normal people on the street at tourist hotspots around New York City and asking them what they’re thankful for. Which doesn’t sound bad after the privilege-palooza that every Calendar Girl novella devolves into, but it sure… gets weird. Especially when you pause to consider, wait, isn’t this primarily an erotic romance series? But disregard that for now. Apparently.
First, Mia asks to interview a dad with a little girl. He’s weirdly aggressive about it, although to be fair that might be the only thing that feels like this could actually take place in New York.
“Hello, excuse me, sir. I’m Mia Saunders, and I’m interviewing people for a segment of Dr. Hoffman about being thankful.”
The man stood and inserted himself in front of his daughter. The move was probably instinctive of a father protecting his child. “Yeah, so?”
Albeit masculine expressions of love are once again coded as inherently violent, because gosh shucks that’s just how men do!
Mia gets her interview after being weirdly manipulative about it (“It would be quite a coup for your little girl later on in life to know she was on TV.”), and Carlan continues to paint a picture of someone who has definitely never lived in New York.
“I’m here with Shaun Pickering and his daughter, Anna, in the very heart of Manhattan, Rockefeller Center, where they are about to go ice-skating, a favorite pastime of many resident New Yorkers.”
SAID NO NEW YORKER EVER.
“Ok, hi, huge fan of the blog here. Can you talk about what’s wrong with this chapter for people who don’t get angry about inaccurate descriptions of New York?” Oh, for sure, Calendar Girl‘s got you too! So you know how this segment on this TV show is Mia’s big break, except it’s very unclear what she’s actually done to earn it? Over the course of the year she’s apparently become a minor celebrity for modeling, being in a music video, and dating celebrities, which somehow led to a TV network hiring her to train her to eventually take over a daytime TV talk show.
Well, this chapter just becomes an extension of that. Mia doesn’t have a knack for interviewing or bringing stories out of any of these people. Mia just repeatedly lucks out with finding people who happen to be ready to gush out easily exploitable personal stories, and then that’s all she has to do through no real effort of her own.
“I’m thankful for my Anna. The only thing I have left of her mother, my late wife.”
I didn’t know how to respond to that. How does anyone respond when they hear of someone’s severe loss?
If anyone should know, it might be the person whose actual job is just knowing how to talk with people?
Anna blinked and grinned. “I’m thankful for my daddy. He’s the bestest daddy in the whole world. And he’s gonna take me ice skating and buy me a hotdog and a soda that Grandma says is so bad for me!”
Another alternative title: “Audrey Carlan Has Probably Never Talked To A Human Child”
Mia thanks them for their time and hands them two prepaid gift cards. The man takes them but asserts that “We didn’t do it for the money.” Yeah, ok, human person who is a single father living in New York City who did a TV interview with a megacorporation just out of the kindness of his heart. Good on you.
The rest of the chapter is just as cloying.
“Now let’s move on to the next location. I’m thinking Empire State Building will be fun!”
Wes and I made it with the crew to the very top of the Empire State Building where I found an older couple […] Once everything was set up, and with the couple standing in front of the New York skyline
HOW ARE THEY IN FRONT OF THE NEW YORK SKYLINE IF THEY ARE ON TOP OF THE EMPIRE STATE BUILDING?
“can you tell me why you’re here today on the top of the Empire State Building on a snowy, sunny day?”
The woman smoothed her hair and looked out over the horizon. “We come here every year, once a year on the same day.”
“And the significance?” I urged.
“It’s where my Xavier proposed to me over sixty years ago.”
Wow, that sure was lucky that once again Mia found people who happened to have a sentimental story she could use. Wherever will she go next on her great adventure to find really real New Yorkers at all the hot tourist spots?
“The Statue of Liberty and Ellis Island, of course!”
Fun BBGT behind the scenes fact: my sister just looked over at my laptop, saw this page of Calendar Girl, said “this makes me unhappy” and walked away.
Wes rolled his eyes. “You are such a tourist!” […]
“Totally! And I’m not ashamed.”
Now to be fair, this is a good point. Only you can say what makes you happy, and there’s nothing inherently wrong with enjoying tourist hotspots. The issue that I have with this whole segment is more so that 1) Mia’s supposed to be this up and coming TV personality worth six figures, and yet all she can muster is this basic-ass middle school day trip to Manhattan, and 2) who is this for? Who is this Calendar Girl reader who genuinely likes this series and gets to book eleven and is thinking, “Oh, sweet! It’s all the famous New York hotspots! This right here is the content I crave, right after the lengthy, sometimes racist sex scenes!”
On the ferry, I […] interview[ed] someone who was standing alone. Turned out I found exactly what I needed
Of course she did.
I saw a bundled up blonde with striking blue eyes […] Her Scottish accent surprised me. I found out that she was a romance writer attending a writer’s conference [and was here] to take advantage and see the full New York skyline in all its glory.
I guess she doesn’t know you can just go to the top of the Empire State Building for that.
“Janine Marr is from Scotland visiting our great nation on business. How has your first visit to the States been?” I asked. […]
“I love Americans. Everyone is always in a hurry to get to the next spot as if the person they are going to meet is the most enchanting person in the world and they need to get there fast.”
Oh boy I guess it’s time for Calendar Girl‘s cloying nationalist undertones again.
“That’s one way to look at it.”
Who. Is. Paying. Mia. Six. Figures. To. Host. This. Show.
When she gets to Ellis Island, Mia interviews more white people about how great America is. “Ok, hi. Blog fan here again, but, geez, Matthew, you can get off your soapbox. It can’t be that bad. It’s not like Calendar Girl is suddenly going to go into an aside about Nazi Ger-”
“From what your son and grandson tell me, you passed through Ellis Island back in 1949 a few years before it closed in 1954.”
“I did. Best day of my life […] Because I was free. Germany had just survived the defeat of the Nazis”
“…hoooo boy.”
“Many of my family were prisoners of war during that time. I promised my mother, who’d lost my father in the war, that I’d find a way to be free.” […]
“And would you say that you were thankful for America, for the opportunity it afforded you?” I asked automatically.
Hypothetical reader who is actually here for Calendar Girl: “Oh, sweet! Saccharine patriotism bordering on thoughtless nationalism! This right here is the content I crave, right after the lengthy, sometimes racist sex scenes!”
The chapter ends with Mia feeling very proud of herself.
Wes grabbed me around the waist and hugged me. “I’m so proud of you, sweetheart.” […]
Today, I was proud of myself. I’d taken a concept, brought it to fruition, and knew that it would resonate with millions of people watching when it aired.
Good for you, sugar.
I know I just finished reading your amusing summary, but – what was that chapter about?
I guess I halfway remember something about interviewing random ppl about how great America is, but… Theme? Plot point? What are you about book???
All this time we’ve been watching Mia find herself, but nobody was watching if the book found itself 🙁
I’m thankful for Calendar Girl being close of the end (I hope)
(Not new, I just forget the name I’ve been using all of the time; I don’t comment much :D)
What pisses me off the most about this series is Mia and everything she stands for. She’s supposed to be a very sexually-open woman who has embraced her desires and feels no shame in it. Many who work as prostitutes/escorts are exactly like that. They truly enjoy their work. But no! Mia has to be forced into it, because she’d be a whore otherwise, right? She has to “have no other choice”, because her father’s debts needs to be paid off. She’s just being a dutiful daughter! And of course, the entire time she insists “I’m not a prostitute! Maybe the other women in this line of work are but not me!”. It’s like when Ana from FSoG had to be forced into the birth control and IUD crap because she would have been a whore if she wanted to go condom-less just like Christian did.
Mia never has any thoughts about others. She never thinks, “I had no choice but to do this for my father. Maybe others out there are just like me? Maybe the prostitutes I see are also struggling and have no choice, but they don’t want to do this.” She never thinks, “Maybe I can use all of this UNEARNED fame to help the women who were exactly like me just a few months ago!”. She never thinks, “I am actually the luckiest woman alive to have gone into this business that is plagued with various levels of sexual assault, physical and mental and psychological abuse, and somehow avoid all of that and instead come across the one-in-a-million chances every single month that sets me up for life!”.
She’s supposed to be an assertive, independent, CONFIDENT character, and yet in every single book the ONLY way her worth is “proven” is through men. If WEALTHY men, who could have ANY woman they want, find HER attractive, smart, and worth everything in the world, then Mia truly is all that the author is trying to pass her off to be, right? I cannot remember if there was even one male character in this series who did not validate her worth. Even the attempted rapist found her worthy. And her beauty? She’s never shown taking any measures to make herself beautiful. She was born drop-dead-gorgeous and clearly came out already photoshopped. There’s no segment at any point where she sees a photo of herself and thinks, “Wait. This doesn’t look like me. Xyz is missing and zyx looks better than it really does. Huh.”. Therefore, not even her beauty is accomplishment.
This series takes a person and coddles her like a little girl, and tells her they deserve all of this because she survived a rough childhood. She’s the female equivalent of the brooding love interest who acts like a complete douchebag but is justified by his traumatizing past. Because of his pain, he deserves whatever wonders come his way, like a nice, obedient girl, and all of the success in the world. Except in Mia’s case, that’s replaced with “violent sex-fiend” and “millions upon millions of totally deserved cash!”.
Even her success is all owed to men. She never would have become known if not for them. She never would have “loved herself” if not for them. How is that romantic or inspiring in any way? She’s a character with no personality because she’s a self-insert, but why would anyone want to pretend they’re this inconsiderate brat who was INCAPABLE of overcoming these challenges in her life? It’s really troubling to think about. She (or rather, the author) takes everything awful about Americans (the overdramatic feeling of trauma, which leads to the toxic sense of entitlement and take-take-take-never-give), and people in general, really, and then PRAISES those awful things in a “RAH, RAH, AMERICANS ARE AMAZING! PATRIOTISM!” light.
Lately, I’ve noticed that a lot of my criticism leads toward me rewriting someone else’s story. It’s not my place to do that. It’s their story, not mine. Write what makes you happy and all, you know? But when you’re publishing something that reinforces harmful ideals, victim silence, the romanticization of violence and stalking, and encourages the worst traits in humanity and passes it off as good fun, why can’t you just keep it to yourself? Or make some message at the very end explaining the real-life issues in what you wrote, but that you’re glad some could still get some escapist enjoyment out of it? SOMETHING..
Mia is one of the most depressing self-inserts I’ve EVER seen.
I agree with everything you wrote here, but especially when you started with this: “But no! Mia has to be forced into it, because she’d be a whore otherwise, right?”
This is what I’ve been saying all along. I actually did some Googling back when we started talking about 50 Shades, and there is a genre of erotica called “Reluctance Fantasy.” It allows the reader to get the pleasure they want out of the story without having to feel guilty because the protagonist is being coerced into her actions. The rules of Reluctance Fantasy also excuse the stalking, harassment, and physical abuse, because if the girl isn’t going to take any action on her own, the guy has no choice but to control her, like she’s a doll.
Mia is a perfect example of this, which is what makes the story so infuriating to many women readers. So is Bella from Twilight. So is Ana. To a much smaller extent, (and I hate to say this because I did enjoy the series) so is Katniss from the Hunger Games. (A much smaller extent, but some of the Reluctance genre rears its ugly head here and there in the HG series.)
If I were still in school, I’d probably be researching and writing a paper on this. I may do it anyway. I would have to do it away from work because the last thing I want is for my boss to find that in my search history.
Thank you for the response.
I’ve never thought of “Reluctance Fantasy” being a genre before you mentioned it. Unfortunately I put that into an engine search and the results were disturbing (When did people start using “forced sex” in place of “rape”? Also came across Adam Sheck’s The Ravish-Me Fantasy: Why Women Want Their Man To Take Them article in Elephant Journal. Didn’t link it because I don’t know if the hosts like that here). I think it could do a lot to help if these books were actually labelled as such, hidden beyond the cover or something. Those who want to avoid it can, those who like these type of stories know exactly where to find it and understand a real relationship should have more consent in it, and the public doesn’t have to know if you’re reading it or not because the note is inside.
When kids read YA, and come across the same thing so many times (a protagonist with a ‘reluctance fantasy’ and a forceful male lead) without even wanting to, they begin to think it’s the norm and how things should be, or are expected to be. That goes for people in general, really. Come across something often enough and you think it’s the truth, because of personal experience. Although personal experience is great, it’s extremely limited because that experience took place only where you’ve been, not on the other side of the world, not in several cultures, etc (t’s like “keyhole judging” in a way). I certainly did that a lot as a child, and catch myself doing it as an adult.
That’s true! Now that I think about it, Katniss is forced to do a lot, and she ends up going along with it. There’s a lot more in that trilogy that can explain it (extreme stress, trauma, complete uncertainty, and the total-control-dytopian setting naturally takes away a lot of everyone’s agency), as opposed to the other mentioned protagonists, but fact is, Peeta and Gale are pushy with her and they get rewarded for it. She seemed pretty frustrated with it most of the time. Primrose was her one and only goal. Maybe I’m remembering it wrong, though.
Let me know if you ever get around to that paper. I would love to read it.
Wait, so april 1st post wasn’t a joke post? Honestly, I would not be able to tell the difference between the real book and a parody and if this chapter had been posted a day earlier I would have easily believed it was a joke as well. Everybody here has done a great job summarazing everything that is wrong with this series. At this point in the series I’m just staring in disbelieve at all the bad choises Carlan made and the fact that apparently nobody pointed them out to her.