A vision of Baudrillard in 2008

This post will be amended at a future date and photographs will be added – so for New York views, this space is the one to watch. In the meantime…

Reality in contemporary times, as attested by life in New York city, is more representation than presentation – reality has morphed into Baudrillard’s dream (or nightmare) of ads, symbols and signs, thrown at each individual at every street corner including, enthrallingly, the interior of taxis, where taxi television network barrages your senses and presents you with Regis & Kelly, ABC news and Cynthia Nixon, all there for your mid-voyage delectation.

But New York is the most unusual of representative truths in that you may never have visited, but you’ve definitely seen it – in Sleepless in Seattle, in the back of a taxi with Miranda and Steve on Sex and the City or in the glossy confines of the lives of Manhattan’s elite in a scene from [my new obsession] Gossip Girl. Times Square seems as familiar to me as the streets of Dublin; Central Park, although I still have not entered within the confines of its walls, is, to me, Carrie and Aidan breaking up, and Serena and Aaron running through flowered fields on an afternoon slip-as-a-dress date. 

The truth, however, is stranger than fiction: the cars honk incessantly, there are garbage trucks that have never been presented on celluloid and, the most drastic difference, beyond all others – the one thing that puts the “new” in New York and makes the city shocking is the black community. Because New York has one – not that you’d know from GG, SATC or any of Hollywood’s blockbusters.

But if the election is anything to go by, the tides are turning. And the United States of America is no longer represented by the white elite. Now it’s the black elite; but it’s the colour that matters, not the class. Nobody is arguing that the underclasses are under-represented, because they’re not. The lower-class girl gets the guy; she succeeds in the upper-class school; she goes from welder to upper-class girlfriend in the blink of a silver-screen eyelid. 

On taxi television, there is an ad for a US news network. The questions they pose, in a booming, voiceover monotone, are these: What changes will he make? What promises must he keep?

It’s probably not on Obama’s immediate list of priorities, but how long can Hollywood ignore the “other” Americans? And does one black person in a sea of milky white epidermis “count”? Jennifer Hudson was the black girl in the movie version of Sex and the City; Vanessa might count as “it” in Gossip Girl - but she’s Latina, so she doesn’t really. What about Ugly Betty? The one genre in which skin colour seems less significant is crime – Law and Order, for example, represents successful black people working in what is, undoubtedly, a cut-throat industry. But why should it be okay to show black cops, when it’s not cool to show fashionable black people? Or rich black people? Or spoiled black people? (Because I’ve seen My Super Sweet 16 and I know they exist!)

It’s just the tip of the iceberg, because we all know that tv is not reality, and neither is film. And New York has an entire thesis-worth of contradictions contained therein, or at least contained in the reality we are presented, versus the reality that is so much more real than that. 

Oh, and big up Obama. I bought three buttons! New York is crazy about him, and he deserves it. Let’s hope he lives up to the justified hype.

A hard pill to swallow – or – Don’t you just love a good cliche?

There’s something about writing a post about contraception – my own contraceptive choices – that fills me with dread. My father will read this; perhaps so will my mother. My friends might stumble upon it, and strangers might read it and judge me, from afar, or from not so far. But I know that there is nothing shameful in making responsible choices; there is nothing, any more, to be ashamed of in wanting to take care of your body, your future – my body and my future. 

I began writing this post in the third person; I was going to write it about a person “whose name had been changed”. I had written half of it before I realised that, if I was going to be brave (yeah, yeah), if I was going to stand up for what I believe in, not just in this post, but in life – then I am going to have to come clean, more with myself than anyone else.

I have been taking some form of oral contraception for approximately six years, for reasons that, if you’ll excuse me, I would rather not explain in too much detail. Suffice it to say that, for me, oral contraception is not enough – nor is it a substitute for safety in all encounters. It is, however, an extra safeguard – it’s sleeping easy at night, it’s feeling satisfied that the future is no more unpredictable than everyone else’s. But there is nothing predictable about using hormones to determine your destiny; there is nothing safe in using relatively new technology on your body. Because – another cliche – you only get one, and by the time you recognise the importance of that, it could be too late.

While I was taking oral contraception, I went through quite a long period of what can only be called mild depression. No, that was not clinically determined by a GP, but I have read enough – seen enough – to know what I was feeling and where my mind was headed. I changed pills; I went to counsellors; I went to my GP on countless occasions. I consulted my parents, I consulted a college lecturer. I looked to my friends and my loved ones for support – but nobody can help when your problem is inside your head. This is a truth that is more accute to me now than it ever has been.

And since I “came clean” with my friends, their friends, about how I was feeling – the mirror images are shocking. The pill is not a quick fix; it does work for some, and of them I feel nothing but envy. But it doesn’t work for everyone. It didn’t work for me. Nor do I think it ever will. I have tried low- and high-dosage; I have tried exercise, massage therapy, acupuncture… I have sought to fix this “problem” with different drugs. Not once did my GP suggest to me I cut out the drugs; never once did he suggest to me that I quit taking hormones, and listen to my own body, despite the fact that it was to him I went to change pills, to discuss my mental state – with the express condition that I didn’t want to go on anti-depressants.

I feel that a great majority of GPs are all too willing to prescribe, full stop, without discussing the effects of that prescription – not just side effects but the overall effects on your body, your spirit and your sanity. Why is that? If taking oral contraception was the man’s job, and perhaps 50% of men between the ages of 20 and 30 were taking some form of it, and 50% of that number were suffering from a type of depression, or a change in personality… would we be ignoring it? Would it be a topic that is “not up for discussion”, that is behind closed doors?

And, furthermore, are men keen on taking oral contraception? Because they’re close to developing it; apparently it will reduce sperm motility, or sperm count – temporarily? How do you like the sound of that, guys?

I have been sane, and pill-free, for a month now. I’m sure I’ll have moments at which this sanity wavers; I’m sure that I’ll have moments in which I’ll cry, and shout, and scream, and fight with my friends and family – but I’m equally sure that, at those moments, I won’t be inside myself wondering who I’ve become. I’m sure that I won’t be experiencing my own life as if I weren’t there. I’m sure I won’t be wishing I could stop myself, knowing how irrational I am, desperate to calm down and cheer up, without knowing how. In abandoning my efforts to control my fertility, I think I have gained control over my life, or, at least, over my mind. And I might just consider staying this way.