Mac Miller, 26, Dead.

(I originally planned to discuss Fashion Week, but the recent news about Mac Miller’s death hit me harder than any Monse or Rodarte runway look. Check out the Aimee Song NYFW vlogs if you’d like a better idea of the world of high fashion.)

Drug overdose. It wasn’t completely unexpected. Ariana Grande mentioned to the press that Mac was dealing with substance abuse problems, which was a big part of their relationship struggles and eventual break-up. Still, 26 is only 5 years older than I am now – a chilling reminder of mortality.

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I was content to spend the rest of the day commemorating Mac Miller’s musical artistry by listening to his entire discography, but then I did something very ill-advised: I checked up Mac Miller on Google and saw people blaming Ariana Grande for his death and Ariana disabling her Instagram comments in response. People were saying things like Ariana had driven Mac to overdose because she broke up with him and got engaged to Pete Davidson. It felt like a repeat of earlier this year when Ariana got blamed for Mac Miller’s DUI and she responded with this tweet:

Just as I felt then, I felt really angry. Regardless of what Ariana had done or had not done, Mac Miller’s death was not her fault. Mac Miller made his own decisions and, unfortunately, relapsed badly. Maybe he was in a bad state of mind at the end of the relationship, but that’s no excuse to take the accusations to new extremes.

I know you’re probably thinking, this author is way too obsessed with celebrity news and gossip. Maybe that’s true – as an avid art lover, it’s hard to separate the artist from their body of work, so I start to associate the same feelings about music with the musicians. I do really love Ariana Grande’s music and spent an entire day listening to her new album. Still, this post isn’t really about defending Ariana, or finding out exactly what drove Mac Miller to relapse. It’s not even really about Mac Miller’s death, although that’s where this post started out. It’s about our culture of blaming women for the weakness of men.

Women are always getting blamed for failed relationships; the term “crazy ex-girlfriend” gets thrown around all the time. Women are expected to be loving and caring, but then get accused of being too emotional and clingy. Women should “go to the kitchen” because teaching men to cook for themselves is preposterous. Women should “keep their men in line,” but nag too much. Our culture denies women the right to be human.

It’s hard because sometimes we perpetuate this same impossible standard of perfection upon women with good intentions.  We say things like “women are always right” and “women are smarter than men.” We call Beyonce “Queen Bey.” We praise female excellence to empower and uplift women, hoping that more of the same will follow as a result. Yet by filling our social media feeds with such blinding achievement, we don’t give women a safe space to make mistakes and fail. This is the case for other marginalized groups as well. There’s always a sense that oppressed minorities must prove themselves in a way that the privileged do not, so we always showcase the success stories to change public stereotypes and to get a seat at the table.  It’s conditional love on an institutional level.

As a society, we need to learn how to accept that women fail, just like men fail, just like gender non-binary and gender non-conforming people do, just like agendered people do. We are all human, and in the words of Alexander Pope: “To err is human.”

It’s clear that Mac Miller was all too human.

-Monica

If you’re just now listening to Mac Miller, as is the posthumous fame tradition, I would like to humbly recommend a few of my favorites with a trigger warning: explicit language.

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Swimming (2018)

“Thoughts From A Balcony” came out when Mac Miller was just starting to get recognized, in part, due to a song which he titled “Donald Trump.”

“Dang!” is a collaboration between Anderson .Paak and Mac Miller: an absolute groovy delight about people who have passed and loves lost.

“Self-Care” is about carving out your own identity and the music video features Kill Bill-esque imagery. It’s from his latest and last album “Swimming,” which I can honestly recommend from the first track to the last – especially “Come Back to Earth” and “Jet Fuel.”

Liberation by Way of Big Macs

This summer, I went abroad for the first time. I spent ten days in France. For those of you who know me, you already know that this trip must have been some ecstasy in my brief, predominantly American gastronomic experience.

And so, being the pretentious American tourist I am, I couldn’t help but feel personally offended that there were people, actual real live people, in the fast-food chains which dotted a few of the Parisian corners. There were five boulangeries to each McDonald’s, and many sold whole, foot-long, freshly baked baguettes for a dollar (or sometimes less!) and yet, people were actually waiting in lines for Big Macs!

To clear the air a bit, I do eat McDonald’s occasionally. And it’s fine. I would even go so far as to say I enjoy the little stroll into my childhood, the cringe-inducing nostalgia of eating what was a highly anticipated “treat” in my youth. I’m not a pretentious douche-bag all the time. But still…in France?! I naively assumed that it was the Americans populating the McDonald’s, it must be the Americans, unable to stomach another bite of haute cuisine like steak tartare or patê, craving instead things that don’t taste at all like what they claim to be (the chicken… come on).

All of these judgments ran vividly through my head when I came across this article: “Yes, There Is a French McDonald’s That Is Beloved – By Its Staff.” The three words “French,” “McDonald’s,” and “Beloved,” together in one sentence? Okay! I’m interested!

Adam Nossiter opens the article with the compelling juxtaposition of “20-year-old…French folklore: peasants, farmers and ex-hippies dismantling a rural McDonald’s, panel by panel,” and “A group of workers…in Marseille…fighting tooth-and-nail to save a McDonald’s from closing in a working-class, largely immigrant neighborhood.” This sentence alone provides deep insight to the fundamental flaw of my seeing France as this romantic, eutopic country, where everyone sits around all day sipping espresso and debating Sartre while the sun sets on the Seine.

For this community in France, Marseille is the name, McDonald’s functions as a vehicle from “the streets” to structure and substance. It provides a medium into a society from which the employees may have been previously excluded. Later in the article, Nossiter eloquently writes:

Even though McDonald’s was once seen as a cultural menace to a glorious French tradition, the workers say this particular McDonald’s, in its quarter-century of existence, has played a vital role as a social integrator in one of France’s most troubled districts — providing employment and shielding local youth from pervasive drug-dealing, getting them out of jail and helping them stay out.

With the current state of political affairs in America and the constant onslaught of criticism highlighting it in the daily news cycle, I find myself easily forgetting that other places also have problems. Even the glamorous France has entire populations of disenfranchised people, ravaged by drugs and poverty in their communities.

The article closes with a provocative sentiment: “‘We’re shocked by this,’ Mr. Grabsi said. ‘We’re not here just to sell hamburgers. They’re just not recognizing what kind of people we have here.’”

I feel guilty for my prior pretensions. Though I would always, always, rather eat a whole baguette than a five-piece McNugget meal, I think that I am missing the point. They aren’t just there to sell hamburgers, and it isn’t all about my egocentric food preferences. And I’m a little disturbed by my pretensions as well, because they illuminate the subtle, difficult-to-swallow reality that I, too, am guilty of internalizing what I understand to be Western European culture as some glorified ideal.

Anyway, I’m just glad it was McDonald’s and not some real trash like Burger King.

-NG