How to take ownership of what you really want | Penelope Trunk Blog

The novel Fifty Shades of Grey is selling faster than a Harry Potter book right now. The book is about sexual domination in a contemporary setting, including the career woman who has everything, including a hot, successful boyfriend.

The big news is that we have enough data to show that the majority of women buying Fifty Shades of Gray are in their 20s and 30s living in urban areas, according to the publisher’s data, and the Atlantic. To be clear, these women are incredibly powerful. In urban areas, more women than men graduate college, women out earn men in their 20s, and we are almost to the point where women in their 30s are outnumbering men as breadwinners. Which means that it is the women who have tons of power who are also having tons of rape fantasies.

None of this should surprise you, because there is a tradition of sexual domination literature being popular with women. For example, The Story of O is a college reading list mainstay for women reading way off the syllabus. And rape fantasies have such a long history of being shockingly ubiquitous among women that we have a euphemism invented by the queasy: fantasies of sexual submission.

So we know that the majority of women who read this blog have a college degree, live in a urban setting, and are in their 20s and 30s, presumably out earning men, if not the men in their immediate surroundings, then at least the men in their theoretical surroundings. Which means that the majority of women who read this blog have lots of power in their lives and also have lots of rape fantasies.

Katie Roiphe has a phenomenal article in Newsweek about why this type of  woman fantasizes about sexual domination. She writes that women must be desperate to read rape fantasies because they are reading Shades of Grey: “Millions of otherwise intelligent women are willing to tolerate prose on this level. If you are willing to slog through sentences like ‘In spite of my poignant sadness, I laugh,’ you must really, really want to get to the submissive sex scene.”
So I am admitting now that I have rape fantasies, too. I have known since I was in college that this is not weird because I was a girl who read everything, and I read so much about rape fantasies that by the time I was teaching creative writing at Boston University I had to make announcements at the beginning of my course that students could not write about masturbation or rape fantasies because it was so common in an intro creative writing class and also so difficult to write well.

There’s something really liberating about being able to own the rape fantasy. First of all, it reflects a lot of self knowledge. It reflects that you know that your fantasies are just fantasies and it’s okay to have them. It reflects that you do not feel the need to have all PC thoughts all the time in order to be an intelligent, educated person. And it reflects the knowledge that you do not lose your power by harboring fantasies of powerlessness—your power is much more stable, and hard-won than that.

If you can do all that, then other things become easy.

For example, it’s easy, then, to also harbor the fantasy of telling everyone at the cocktail party to fuck off when they ask you what you do and you are doing nothing because you know you’re going to get pregnant in four months and you don’t want to get a job and then leave it in a year. Because let me assure you that this is what most women want to do: work part-time after they have a baby. So of course they don’t want to hunt for a full-time job right before they have a baby.

It also becomes okay to say that you are only dating men who earn a lot of money. Because I simply don’t believe that women harbor the fantasy of being responsible for putting food on the table for their family. Women do it because it’s practical. They fall in love with the intoxicating nature of earning money, or they fall in love with a guy who is terrible at earning money. But the number of women who want a full-time, high-powered job is very slim.

Honestly, it’s easier for me to admit that I have rape fantasies than it is for me to admit that I wanted to marry a guy who makes a ton of money. If nothing else, I have control over both, and I’m only getting what I want for one of them. I have a huge collection of rape fantasy books leftover from when I was too scared to tell the guy I’m with what my fantasies are. And I have a mate who is unfazed by the fantasies: he’s heard it before.

But I did not get the guy who earns more than I do. I tried, but mostly what happened is that I hated those guys and when they asked me out on a third date, I wrote blog posts instead.
Admitting to rape fantasies is so liberating because now I can admit to all the other un-PC things I’m feeling. I want to stay home with my kids because of guilt and I don’t care. I think it’s guilt built into my DNA and I’m not going to fight it.

And I want someone to take care of me and I don’t care if you know. Sure, I like that I can take care of myself. But most educated, city-raised women can take care of themselves and their kids. It’s not that difficult. Finding a guy who will take care of me is much harder.
I’m probably not going to read Fifty Shades of Gray, because, as an ex-creative writing instructor, I need to tell you that Elizabeth McNeil and Marquis de Sade are much stronger writers of the literary rape scene.  But I am done having closeted fantasies. I don’t want to be told by the feminists what’s okay for me to want. I am done hiding what I really want because what is really liberating is for women to be able to want whatever we want. via blog.penelopetrunk.com

Jim does one on one business coaching, strategy consulting and speaking. Get Our Coaching -  jwoods@innothinkgroup.com

Jim Woods is president and founder of InnoThink Group; a leading Strategic Management and Innovation Consulting Firm in Denver, Colorado. He is an author, speaker, and a strategic innovation and hypercompetition expert to profit, non-profit organizations and municipalities. He advises clients with an objective view of their competitive capabilities and defines a clear course of action to maximize their innovation return on investment to achieve profitable growth. Build a capability for ongoing competitive innovation across your company. Call 719-649-4118 or complete our form: contact us for more information on hiring Jim to advise or speak for your next event. Get Our Coaching - Business, Career or Life. 

When Your Career Goes in an Unexpected (and Record-Breaking) Direction

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Contrary to popular belief, the world’s tallest man does not greet you at the door when you arrive at Guinness World Records’ offices. And, no, the world’s oldest person doesn’t work the copy machine dispensing nuggets of age-old wisdom, nor does the woman with the world’s longest fingernails hang out in the break room offering back scratches.

But working for GWR – while it might not include the daily circus-like atmosphere most imagine – is certainly unique, and it definitely takes a special type to make it in this line of work.
One of the most common questions I get as Head of U.S. Records Management Team is, “How did you start working for Guinness World Records?”

Well, once you break 10 records of your own, they hire you to start working on the inside.
That, of course, is completely untrue.

I, for one, would never have guessed I’d be in my current position coming out of college. Graduating from Syracuse in 2007, I took my broadcast journalism degree and headed south to embark on a two-year journey in minor league baseball and college sports broadcasting, with some dabbling in freelance newspaper reporting on the side.

But turns out that all the experiences I had calling play-by-play of a 16-inning baseball game or interviewing student athletes live on the air after a tough loss prepared me exceptionally – if unexpectedly – for a job overseeing our U.S. team of record verifiers.

(And when your organization deals with everyone from a bachelor in Thailand who wants to run the fastest 100m in flippers to a family in Topeka that can’t believe their dog doesn’t have the longest tongue in the world, you draw on a lot of different professional experience.)

Thanks to my education and background in TV and video, I have no problem getting on camera and in front of large crowds. This helps when I have to appear on Jimmy Kimmel Live! to judge a record for “most balloons burst simultaneously by arrows;” or when I have to give a speech in front of a festival crowd of a few thousand who have come for their free sample from the “largest serving of roast pork” (6,821.54 lbs., by the way).

My history in newspaper reporting and editing blessed me with a clinically worrisome attention to detail, which comes in handy when you judge an attempt like the “fastest text message” being completed suspiciously quickly – to find out upon further examination that two words were omitted from the required text.

And people always wonder how we could possibly have the heart to break the news to someone that their record needs to be rejected. Well, after spending enough time talking to the point guard who missed the game-winning shot or the shortstop whose error cost his team a spot in the playoffs, you get seasoned enough to know how best to break it to someone that their “tallest stack of shoes in one minute” has to be discounted on a technicality.

Some career paths come pretty well-defined. Doctors, lawyers, accountants – they all basically come with a checklist of how to get from step 1 to your goal, like a reality version of the board game “Life.”

Other careers, like mine at Guinness World Records… not so much.
What I’ve learned is that personality has a lot to do with it. Everyone has their own marketable skills coming out of college or their first couple jobs. The important thing is having the wherewithal to adapt what you’re good at to an environment where you can flourish.
Just like Batman uses the same utility belt to fight all his different crimes, any person’s core skill set can translate to any industry, provided they’re adaptable, amenable, and open-minded.

So while I couldn’t have known it at the time, all those school lectures in Communications 101 and all those long hours prepping for radio broadcasts turned out to prepare me pretty well for what I do now.

Except for meeting Snooki during a record attempt on New Year’s Eve. Nothing can prepare you for that.
As Head of U.S. Records Management for Guinness World Records, Mike Janela has traveled to 10 countries and 19 states to adjudicate more than 60 record attempts. Show him your talent at www.guinnessworldrecords.com, www.facebook.com/guinnessworldrecords, or on Twitter @GWRnews.

via blog.brazencareerist.com

Jim does one on one business coaching, strategy consulting and speaking. Email -  jwoods@innothinkgroup.com

Jim Woods is president and founder of InnoThink Group; a leading Strategic Management and Innovation Consulting Firm in Denver, Colorado. He is an author, speaker, and a strategic innovation and hypercompetition expert to profit, non-profit organizations and municipalities. He advises clients with an objective view of their competitive capabilities and defines a clear course of action to maximize their innovation return on investment to achieve profitable growth. Build a capability for ongoing competitive innovation across your company. Call 719-649-4118 or complete our form: contact us for more information on hiring Jim to advise or speak for your next event. Business, Career or Life Coach.