{"id":9261,"date":"2011-09-18T15:58:32","date_gmt":"2011-09-18T22:58:32","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/michaelhans.com\/eclecticism\/?p=9261"},"modified":"2019-12-23T15:47:57","modified_gmt":"2019-12-23T23:47:57","slug":"the-frog-prince","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/michaelhans.com\/eclecticism\/2011\/09\/18\/the-frog-prince\/","title":{"rendered":"The Frog Prince"},"content":{"rendered":"<div class='__iawmlf-post-loop-links' style='display:none;' data-iawmlf-post-links='[{&quot;id&quot;:2989,&quot;href&quot;:&quot;http:\\\/\\\/tigerbeatdown.com\\\/2011\\\/08\\\/31\\\/elitism-now-it-basically-just-means-not-having-sex-with-everybody&quot;,&quot;archived_href&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;redirect_href&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;checks&quot;:[],&quot;broken&quot;:false,&quot;last_checked&quot;:null,&quot;process&quot;:&quot;done&quot;}]'><\/div>\n<p>From <a href=\"http:\/\/tigerbeatdown.com\/2011\/08\/31\/elitism-now-it-basically-just-means-not-having-sex-with-everybody\/\" title=\"Tiger Beatdown \u203a \u201cElitism:\u201d Now, It Basically Just Means \u201cNot Having Sex With Everybody\u201d\">Tiger Beatdown \u203a \u201cElitism:\u201d Now, It Basically Just Means \u201cNot Having Sex With Everybody\u201d<\/a>:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>\n  We get a lot of sexist narratives about love, but none of them are more pernicious and subtle than this: The Frog Prince story. You could call it \u201cBeauty and the Beast,\u201d too. Or you could call it \u201cTwilight,\u201d or \u201cKnocked Up,\u201d or \u201cRory Williams Won\u2019t Stop Whining;\u201d it\u2019s always the same story, anyway. Girl meets guy. On the surface, this guy is unappealing! Because he\u2019s a frog! Or he\u2019s not sexually attractive to her, or he treats her badly, or he\u2019s immature, or he\u2019s Rory Williams and he won\u2019t stop whining; all of these are frog-like states, generally considered unkissable. But only a bitch would think that frogs don\u2019t deserve our sweet, sweet kisses, so the woman doesn\u2019t leave. Instead, she looks for the guy\u2019s good qualities. She lowers her standards; she changes her expectations. She gives up on her silly little \u201cideas\u201d about \u201cattractiveness\u201d or \u201ccompatible lifestyles\u201d or \u201chaving fun with her partner.\u201d Finally, she loses touch with her own desires to the point that she winds up making out with a fucking frog. At which point he becomes a prince. Or a loving husband, or a responsible person, or a whiny little Roman Centurion; the point is, in these stories, once you give up on wanting things from men, men magically become what you want.<\/p>\n<p>  Here\u2019s the secret, though, if you are the girl in this particular story: That guy never became a prince. At all. He\u2019s still the same guy; he still possesses all those qualities you initially found unappealing, for all sorts of valid reasons. People don\u2019t go from frog to mammal overnight, and they particularly don\u2019t do so because you ask less of them; you are still making out with a frog, in the long run. The only reason he looks like a prince nowadays is that you lowered your standards to the point that you literally could not tell the difference between frog and mammal. It\u2019s not that you got what you wanted; it\u2019s that you settled for wanting what you got. And that is the precise opposite of a happy ending.\n<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>&#8216;It\u2019s not that you got what you wanted; it\u2019s that you settled for wanting what you got. And that is the precise opposite of a happy ending.&#8217;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2028],"tags":[16],"class_list":["post-9261","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-links","tag-quotes"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/michaelhans.com\/eclecticism\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9261","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/michaelhans.com\/eclecticism\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/michaelhans.com\/eclecticism\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/michaelhans.com\/eclecticism\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/michaelhans.com\/eclecticism\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9261"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/michaelhans.com\/eclecticism\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9261\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/michaelhans.com\/eclecticism\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9261"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/michaelhans.com\/eclecticism\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9261"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/michaelhans.com\/eclecticism\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9261"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}