Reading Copy Book Blog

I really loved the New Yorker blog Book Bench’s post this morning about the impending demise of the Cathy comic strip (finally). Many of the suggestions for how Cathy should end were hilarious, but mean-spirited. And it’s unsurprising, because Cathy, created by Cathy Guisewite, is an old-fashioned, innocent comic, out of its depth by today’s standards.

It’s funny that Meredith Blake, who wrote the post, should bring up The Family Circus, as well – I guess my mind isn’t the only one in which the two woefully outdated comics are intertwined. The Family Circus is downright eerie in some ways, with robed spectres of dead grandparents playfully haunting the children from time to time, and just too innocent to be funny in other ways. We get it, P.J. can’t pronouce “spaghetti”. It’s adorable. Pasketti. We get it.

Cathy just seems to have an enormous target on its (her?) back, in a world dominated by internet people trolling for their next victim of clever sarcasm. The simple formula of a woman trying to keep it together, constantly struggling with her weight, her diet, her (lack of, often) love life, her job, her budget and the like is nothing new to either reality or fictional media. But I think unlike the characters in Sex and the City, or Friends, who come off as lovable in their perfectly-polished quirks, Cathy often read as pathetic. She was often a sweaty mess in sweat pants, relying on the love of a cat and a tub of ice cream to comfort her when the hustle and bustle of the real world became too much. Constantly jamming the void in her soul and heart full of shoes, chocolate, sales at the mall and the like, it was hard not to wince and avert the eyes. Especially when it was intended as funny.

I think for some women, (not naming any names here, certainly not owning up to anything), the comic elicited cringes a lot more frequently than laughs. Partly, it just isn’t really funny, except in that Someone’s Got a Case of the Mondays kind of way, which has been done to death on mugs, calendars and novelty, mesh-backed hats for eons. Today’s edgy, blase audiences expect more, and sit stony-faced and yawning. Go ahead. make me laugh. Try.

But it also hits a little close to home. While Cathy is portrayed as cartoonishly bumbling, over-the-top sheepish and forever exasperated, she’s just an extreme caricature of what many of us struggle with – the battle between the desire to be comfortable but beautiful, relaxed but ambitious, honest but polished, successful, loved.

One can picture Cathy as a real woman, though possibly named Barb or Sue or Linda, easing her high heels off her swollen feet under her desk and trying to wedge the hole in her pantyhose between two of her toes. She sneaks a bit of diet, sugar-free chocolate from her desk drawer (sure, it upsets her stomach, but who can afford the calories? And we all need our little getaways during the day) and sighs contentedly. A coworker passes by her desk, and inquires what the good word might be. She replies with something about TGIF, or How goes the battle, or working hard or hardly working?, and their empty exchange is quickly forgotten. Her bright lipstick has faded throughout the day, leaving only a few coral flakes drying at the corners of her mouth, and her hairspray has given up the ghost, leaving her coiffure to sag in a slumped shadow of its earlier glory. Her smile is bright, but we see her, sitting beneath a poster of a cat dangling from a tree branch, with the words “Hang in there!”, and while her smile falters for a moment, we hope she does, and we think she will, and that is the way I want Cathy to end. With her hanging in there, and things looking up.

…in other news, how did I just end up writing a largely heartfelt (if somewhat tongue-in-cheek) post about Cathy?! Need coffee…or chocolate… ACK!