Monetizing Misery

By Maureen Sharib
I've been reading Penelope Trunk's (not her real name) Brazen Careerist (where career issues and life collide) blog for a couple months now and am amazed at the frankness and forthrightness she offers us. I read July 20's "My own marriage and the myth of the stay-at-home dad" in which she starts the riveting confession with:

"For those of you who don’t know what's going on in my marriage, please read My First Day of Marriage Counseling, and maybe you will want to leave a comment about how if you were my husband, you'd divorce me for blogging about my marriage."

"My husband, in fact, has brought up divorce for other reasons. I am not totally sure which ones, to be honest, but I think it is career related since I have a great career and his sort of stalled when he became a stay-at-home dad and then went to hell from there."

Within a day she had 62 comments, many of them affirming along with a few judgmental casts doubting what Penelope's possible motivation could be in writing about this part of her life. The reason I am writing about this here is that I realize Penelope (not her real name) is either in cahoots with a smart husband who realizes if he goes along with the ploy the two of them can make a million zillion dollars out of their "unhappiness" or this woman is truly a perceptive and amazingly willing contributor to our own "situations" in life and is keenly in tune to the misery of the masses.

Immediately I turn to Bob, my husband, and point out the opportunity. "Look, honey, we can monetize our unhappiness if you'd just let me write about how miserable we are…" I say, half-kiddingly.

"No way! See that eighth word in the first sentence of her second paragraph?" he asked. I had to count in eight words to see what he was talking about: the "D" word, as in "My husband, in fact, has brought up divorce…"

"Oh, stop," I said to him. "You know what I mean…" I trailed off as he again, and most excitedly, interrupted me.

"NO, I DON’T know what you mean. What do you want to write about our private life for? It’s gonna get you in a lot of trouble," he warned. "WITH ME."

Red flashing lights.

"How? For being REAL in what I write?" I snap back, sensing a gauntlet being thrown and taking his cue, feel myself flush. Suddenly, I could see that this was a HOT BUTTON kind of event and realized I'd better take a closer look at Penelope's responses. Doing so, I could definitely sense a gender bias in the responses - the women more affirming and the men more questioning of what/why/how of what she was doing.

In spite of what Bob (and some others say) I still believe we can all learn from this kind of extreme personal transparency. What do you think?

Maureen Sharib
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Comments

[laurence haughton]

I think that there's always some instructional value that one could use to justify watching or reading what you call "extreme personal transparency." But it's not right IMHO to publish intimate portraits, in words or pixels, of another person without their permission. So as long as it's between consenting adults...

[Richard Becker]

With the exception of noting that any instructional value depends largely on the subjects and their ability to not simply rattle off their twisted sense of perception as relationship truths, I agree wholeheartedly with you Laurence. Just like anything in a relationship, it's not up to one person to decide if two people will become a public spectacle. Best, Rich

[Colin Kingsbury]

I think part of the issue here is that Penelope sells books for a living, and therefore something like this raises the question of whether it's being done for commercial gain.

[Chris Taylor]

I'm not in favour of airing out one's dirty laundry on a blog simply because it's vulgar. Is it authentic? Yes -- authentically ill-mannered and gauche.

Everyone has their own problems, but the world is not a supportive Oprah soundstage. Seek solace and advice from one's own close friends / privy councillors.

[JohnMcG]

Hmmm -- I wonder how "affirming" women would be of a man who blogged details of a mediation session without while being coy about whether he got his wife's consent to do so, only complimented his wife as being really good at packing lunch boxes, delegated finding a counselor to his wife because he was too busy blogging, couldn't get through a paragraph without talking about how great his career is going while his wife's, (who is staying home to care for their special-needs child) has "kind of stalled," being surprised that his wife wanted a divorce, and not knowing the reasons why.

I suspect the female response to such a husband would not be an embrace of support and applause for his bravery and honesty.

We "can all learn" from lots of stuff. We can learn what a safe level of radiation is by gradually exposing prisoners to it until they die. That is not a sufficient to make a case that we should do it, though.

Unless Ms. Strunk's husband is willing to place his behavior and marriage under the microscope for our benefit, doing so without his consent is simply wrong.

[Joseph Dunphy]

If I were Trunk's husband, I would have divorced her for oh so very many reasons long before this issue came up.