press the pause

A catcall is entirely about reminding you that you are not yours. The purity myth is entirely about reminding you that you are not yours. The fetishization of female purity in a world where catcalls are an acceptable form of communication telegraphs one thing very clearly:

“Women, stop sexualizing yourselves—that’s our job, and you’re taking all the fun out of it.”

The sexualization of women is only appealing if it’s nonconsensual. Otherwise it’s “sluttiness,” and sluttiness is agency and agency is threatening.

If the Shadow has a flesh-and-blood counterpart in the hierarchy of Hollywood, it is the writer: a pasty loser, whose suggestions are constantly being ignored or overruled. “No one looks to the writer to make the decisions,” one of Michels’s writer patients said. “You’re trying to fulfill everyone’s expectations. They think of you almost as an arm to do their thoughts.” “We’re like carnies, always out there trying to sell some idea,” another writer, who sees Michels, and whose husband, also a writer, sees Stutz, told me. It can be a frustrating, demoralizing job; scripts are bastardized to the point of being unrecognizable, if they get made at all. According to Michels, “Writers always feel beaten up. They always feel like an underclass. How do you maintain a sense of self in this environment?” In sessions with writers, Michels listens to pitches and plot lines, an attentive, albeit paid, audience. He reassures them that they are “off-the-charts smart”—a turn of phrase that some are surprised to learn does not exclusively pertain to them. He has occasionally been known to read scripts and, he says, “I give pretty good notes.