Something that has been bugging me...

[aerofish.livejournal.com]

Hello, all. I'm new to this group and this is my first post. I figured I'd introduce myself with this peeve of mine.

I was reading the sample chapters for the next Anita book, and it was mentioned Anita is 27. This made me back up and go WTF(well, more than I already was). I know Anita is supposed to be in her twenties, yet that fact just never seems to stick, and I constantly find myself envisioning her as mid-30s with the mind-set, perhaps, of someone much older, if not the maturity. And giving her the age of 27 in this upcoming book really drove home the point to me, as that is my age.

Anita does not act like any twenty-something I know. For any of you around Anita's age, do you feel the same way? And I know I'm making a sweeping generalization about how a 25-30 year old should act, but shouldn't there be some consistencies with the popular culture for this age group? I have so many examples, but here's two obvious ones:

-Does she dress like someone my age dresses? Maybe if it were the 80's or early 90's, with her silk shell blouses and pantyhose and power jackets. Maybe she's going for a retro-ironic hipster thing, and I'm too dull to see it?

-She speaks with none of the slang commonly used. And while yes, "nifty" is a, well, nifty word...it's not exactly the cornerstone of a young person's vocabulary, right? Doesn't she, in one book referencing her brother's opinion of her line of work, even say something like "he says it's cool, or whatever the kids are saying these days?" Uh. Right.

In general, this is such a minor pet peeve, what with the many many MANY issues with her books I am having these days. But still, shouldn't there be a least a few references here and there anchoring Anita to the age she is supposed to be?

Comments

[saadiira.livejournal.com]

Oddly enough, I think that Anita acts YOUNGER. Hear me out, now, please.

1-Even early on, her entire badassitude was classicly teenaged bravado on steroids. Even when I liked her, half the time I had to shake my head over how damn STUPID it really was to be saying half of what she was..and unecessary to still prove, woah, I am not afraid/will not give you what you want you bastid...Not that I don't love the snark, far from it, but c'mon...Much of it is the reaction a teenager would THINK a badass would cop.
2-She cannot accomplish a genuine, mature relationship with a man. Early on, she was even still agonizing over having sex at all, then at the same time, having sex with two men, and being completely unreasonable about the entire affair.
3-Many of her arguments and peeves and so on are quite childish.
4-Deep down, the Anita character was a nerd. Now, there are various forms of nerd, of course. Some are just bookish, but otherwise normal, some just more intelligent, some even don't LOOK like nerds on the surface. Still, Anita was at the least a 'good girl' nerd. Not that socially apt, truly, at all.
5-Anita's core of self loathing over thoughtless family comments, and things that cannot be changed. By the time most of us hit our twenties and thirties, we stop the hell worrying about whether or not we're blonde like our stepmother/sister, whatever, and are far more accepting of who we are. In short..ANGSTS like a teen.


Good and bad, and with the massive 'tude, the OLD Anita actually reminded me quite a bit of MYSELF at about 16 on several of those points...That's before life has the tendency to kick that shit out of you, and teach you it's too damnes short, to boot. (Some of her expressions and style likewise, as an aside, though frankly, back in the eighties (When I was a teen) and since, I personally was pretty damned STYLIN', SO not the prep variety, and wouldn't be caught dead in one of those windbreakers OR an Izod shirt...The nikes with the swoosh were mostly for gym class, and when I dressed it up straight, it was jeans and concert and cigarette (Yes, it was still cool to smoke) tees, or if I dressed androgynous, it was black leather, or military surplus, thank you.

I only did the Miami vice froofroo colors when I LIVED in Miami, and then rarely. Head to toe black, and admittedly by college, a good five ten years beyond my time (Which would put my fashion sense at least firmly in the nineties). NOT all eighties fashions were the worst, though. Some of the fringe stuff was pretty damned cool. You got elements of grunge before there was grunge (It was called not giving a damn if you wore your hiking clothes to school), goth, and punk that weren't at all bad, and fortunately, fads like the tuxedo blouse passed quickly.)

What LKH seems to have picked up on for her vampires is straight out of a Poison or early Adam Ant video. I'm not even sure it's really Goth.

Now, I'd actually say that LKH was a teen starting in the early EIGHTIES, and aging out by about '87..so there you go on the fashion, and expressions. Not only was she an eighties teen, but a MIDWESTERN one. ANY cool factor you'd really find would be on the coasts, just like now, and much of what you see now of eighties fashion is the creme de la crap they were pushing in romantic comedies. Figure Laurel for 3-5 years BEHIND whatever would have been avante gard at the time, and a dumbed down version to boot, and there you go. She'd also be stuck with expressions that would have filtered down 3-5+ years late, and since more kids still listened to their parents and grandparents back then (Or had to in circumstances like around the table more often, where such things are more likely to come up), it's not surprising she'd pick up some bizarre slang from other eras. There's also the chance that some of what she's got is specifically regional. St Louis, ie, is big on Blues.

-Dira-

[randomsome1.livejournal.com]

I'm not as well-versed in the series as most of the people on here, but I did notice in the 3-chapter misspelled excerpt on her site that Anita and Ronnie were acting like crack-addled fourteen-year-olds.

"Shh, I'm a hobag, don't tell anyone."

"Ok, and I might be pregnant, don't tell anyone."

*boys arrive*

"YOU WHORE!! GUESS WHAT SHE JUST TOLD ME!!!"

"OMG I H8 YOU!!! ANITA'S KNOCKED UP!"

[dwg.livejournal.com]

AHH HA HA!

But yes, this is the sort of thing I'd expect to hear in high school gossip.

Then again, back when I was in high school, I told a girl, "Just you wait until final year and you'll be as cynical as us."

She gave me this brainless look and said, "What does cynical mean?"

I handed her a dictionary and told her to look under C.

She whined back, "Just teeelll meeeee!!!"

I kid you not, this actually happened. I made her look up the goddamned word, she read the definition and still didn't understand it.

So, maybe LKH is of the same ilk as this kid, only more growed up. *shudders*

[sweetpirate.livejournal.com]

She gave me this brainless look and said, "What does cynical mean?"

I understand how the dumbing of youth is a bad thing, but at the same time, at least she ASKED. I'd rather someone ask me when they don't understand something, instead of pretending they know and trying to use it later...

[aerofish.livejournal.com]

Oh, I definately thinks she acts much, much younger than her age (Anita? You WERE throwing it in Ronnie's face in the upcoming book. What are we, 6?) You hit it right on the head.

I figured that it was a case of LKH's own experiences at that age coming through. And if the books were set in that period, hey, no problem. But unless I am wrong, and they're not supposed to be seen as happening now, it just bugs the hell outta me.

I mean, I was raised by my grandparents AND in North Dakota, to boot. And that doesn't explain it for me. Really, the fashion was not that far behind. And it took maybe a couple months to be assimilated. And she does watch TV, yes? Or is that too proletariat for her? Because surely she realizes fashion has changed a bit from when she was 27.

Maybe her emotional maturity and her pop culyure maturity, when added, equal her actual age? I dunno. lol

[dwg.livejournal.com]

There was a blog where LKH watched some movie with Tommy Lee Jones in it and it had regular "teenagers" in it, and she had to ask Jon "Is that what girls are wearing these days?" and she was so utterly shocked that girls would dress like hookers. In public.

So, my guess is no - she doesn't watch the television with its tiny people inside, dancing just for her.

[vanity-lost.livejournal.com]

First: I'm sooo glad I wasn't the only one who was thinking that the preview of Ronnie and Anita was like reading some acid-laced, badly-spelled version of Thirteen. The girls in my middle school were the bitchy unholy terrors of which parental and societal nightmares are made. And Ronnie and Anita were acting exactly like them.

As a midwest kid myself, nothing but nothing explains Anita's out-of-touch attitudes and fashions. St Louis is not anywhere near as passe as LKH-land would make it seem.

On the other hand, the whole issue of fashion-not-keeping-up-with-the-times is an issue with other longer running series. The Stephanie Plum books? The clothes, lack of technology, etc, are somewhere perpetually around 1995. 1999 in the more recent ones. The author only seemed to notice the issue when some fans started commenting on it.

Maybe Laurell just hasn't noticed. There's a lot in the books she hasn't noticed recently though, so I guess the fashion throwbacks are something we shouldn't be surprised by.

[aerofish.livejournal.com]

Hello, she could even just watch Oprah and get a pretty decent handle on how people are dressing these days, you know? Doesn't surprise me a bit she'd say that about current teen trends.

[track-04.livejournal.com]

Anita's fashion sense has always struck me as something that wasn't even particularly cool at the time it was in, though. The descriptions sound more like something my grandmother would have worn at the time, not someone who would even be attempting to be hip. o.<; Or that could just be my own personal bias. Because I loathe fanny packs. >.>;

And I'm not entirely sure your take on the midwest is absolutely correct. We do tend to be behind but 3-5 years seems like a little extreme. 6 months or even possibly a year, yeah, but we're not quite that out of touch. I'd give you a little longer in the 80s when LKH would have been growing up, true... but it seems to me that she was always just a little on the lame side to begin with from what I'm picking up. *laughs*

And I don't think the slang she uses is regionally based. Not from what I've heard from people from the St. Louis area, at least. I think it just shows LKH's severe inability to get with the times. XD;

[aerofish.livejournal.com]

I remember when I moved, around '97, the big difference? Flare jeans hadn't yet hit their stride yet in ND. So I went, bought a couple pair, and was pretty much in tune with the people at my college who came from major east coast cities.

My theory? For all of LKH's (and Anita's) yammerings about how they don't really care about fashion, she sure goes on and on and on in loving detail in the books. My theory is that LKH wants to be (and sees Anita as) someone who just throws something together and looks amazing. You know, the entire "What? This old thing?" Fashionable without keeping rack of trends, or even simply noticing them.

[track-04.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I've never really seen a big difference between what people wear here (MO) and what they wear where my friends who are from either coast live. Especially with all of the chain stores across the country now things tend to make it here really soon after they hit.

I've never thought about it that way but that really does seem right... maybe it's another thing that she can't necessarily do in real life but she (thinks she) can do it with her character and compensates that way.

[demoncougar.livejournal.com]

"For all of LKH's (and Anita's) yammerings about how they don't really care about fashion, she sure goes on and on and on in loving detail in the books."

Oh yeah, LKH is a total clothes horse. She's acting out her fantasies by dolling up all of her characters.