When I was a teenager, I watched Twiggy on a television interview. I cried for DAYS, because at a busty 17, I was out of style, anonymous, and insignificant. I didn’t want to be like her, but I did bemoan the fact that she was desired, while I was not.

Not until a couple of years ago did my Zoftig figure become an asset.
Yet I have always known that Twiggy and Kate Moss and Calista Flockhart were too skinny. WAY skinnier than I wanted to be.

Part of what makes Mickey Rourke so compelling is not that he is what we aspire to be, but rather, he allows us to bolster our self images while he serves as the distorted fun-house mirror we need to change our own self view. We hang on his words BECAUSE they are so inappropriate for the time and place.

The Mickey Rourkes of Hollywood and Wall Street and MIT for that matter, allow us to feel better about our lack of fame and fortune because:

1) WE are not nearly as messed up as he (they) and therefore we are inherently better than he to begin with, despite his money and notoriety (and probably talent).

2) If HE can redeem himself, recover and rebound, then surely (Listen up Amy Winehouse) we can accomplish even more, since (refer to point 1) we weren’t as bad as he to begin with.

So as bad as he gets, we’re still better, and if HE gets better, then there is even greater hope for our own improvability.

We, OUR generation (yours and mine) lost our identities when we found out that marriage and families and careers and Gawd help us, LIVES, required that we sell out some of our lofty ideals. I knew for certain (at 19 years young) that I could change the world. Even after the deaths of Kennedy, King, and Kennedy, I still had power, and nothing could stand in my self-righteous way.

It merely took 6lb 4.75 oz of hungry blue-eyed responsibility, and one pick-pocket on a bus, to change every power I had into comic book fantasy.
Nothing makes you doubt your personhood like a screaming baby and no milk money.
I never did change the world, just diapers. and my priorities.

So instead I look around me to the people that have the media’s attention, which translates backwards and forwards to OUR attention. I see people who do nothing admirable, and change the world for worse, and then I see those who make great strides by using their money and fame as ‘a force for good’.

What we need… OUR Generation, is to go back now that we have a little more time, kids in school or better even those of us with empty nests, go find the things in the world that are still changable, and take up our placcards, our voices, our votes and our drive, to make those changes. Then we can be better than not only the Rourkes of the world, but even better than the Pitt-Jolies… because we do it without the fame, the money, the media.

Besides, changing the world precludes our sitting home on Sunday nights watching Mickey blather, and feeling jealous (even in small tiny letters).