“I’m not saying I would put a stop to the project, because I’m sort of a nice guy. When I was a kid, my mother said, ‘Stephen if you were a girl, you’d always be pregnant.’”
I was reading a recent interview with Stephen King where he shares the news that he’s writing a sequel of sorts to The Shining, one of my favorite King books — well, one of my favorite horror books, period! I wrote a blog post about being a horror fan before, so if you’ve read me a while you probably already know that.
Anyway, I’m reading the interview, smiling at the always amusing and down-to-earth King, and getting excited about the notion of seeing where Danny Torrance is now, 30 years after the horrible things that happened to him as a boy at the Overlook. And then I get to the quote above, and it gets me thinking about the difference between men and women… in other words, grist for a long overdue blog post!
First off, I found it interesting that King’s Mom would say such a thing to her son as a kid! It makes me wonder if the anecdote is accurate given how memory works as years go by– god bless him, but it’s been quite a while since King was a kid. But let’s assume she did say that to a very young Stephen… wouldn’t he respond with “What do you mean?”
And what would Mrs. King say to that question?
The context of the quote was an interview question concerning Warner Brothers potentially developing a prequel to The Shining based on material cut from the beginning of the novel King wrote. King doesn’t want that to happen — he doesn’t explain why, but we can assume than as an artist he decided to cut that part out of his book and likely feels that his creative decision should stand — but he mentioned that he isn’t sure he’d put up a fight to stop Warner Brothers from going forward with the project. Then he says:
“I’m not saying I would put a stop to the project, because I’m sort of a nice guy. When I was a kid, my mother said, ‘Stephen if you were a girl, you’d always be pregnant.’”
Which then got me thinking… the whole “nice guy” persona, something I’m very much familiar with, really is pretty much a male phenomenon. I thought back to the posts I wrote about The Friend Zone, and The Mating Habits of Beta Men, but with an eye on just how different the whole friendly/nice dynamic is different depending on whether you’re the guy or the girl. Being “the nice guy” really does tend to put you in a place where romantic and sexual contact is pretty rare, whereas being “the nice girl” can get you a fair amount of romantic and sexual contact if you so choose. I often think about how interesting it must be to be a woman who has that power of choice, the ability to take a friendship with a man and one day just take it to another level if she desires. How do women feel about having that freedom? Are they thrilled by it? Or burdened by it, in a “with great power comes great responsibility” sort of way?
To me the quote pretty much says…
You don’t know how to say no, because you don’t want to disappoint or have someone dislike you.
I guess my point is it has nothing to do with being “nice”. It is more of an insecurity thing if you ask me and I don’t think it is gender specific.
I think the Mom meant ,” You’re so nice you can’t say no. ” No to salesmen, no to anyone who’s clearly taking advantage of your kindness. . It’s a different matter if a girl can’t say to no to anyone who asks for sex. The Mom was speaking metaphorically, or is that a figure of speech?
Cheers !