Hello friend, welcome to Scrap Facts. I’m Katherine, and I’m glad you’re here.
By day, I work in communications for a public health group. In my free time, I write essays to better understand life.
My favorite kind of art are the pieces that I cannot stop thinking about weeks after I experience them. And me, the art that has lived rent-free in my head for the past month and a half is the movie Challengers (starring Zendaya, Mike Faist, and Josh O’Connor).
I was so excited for this movie, which features every single one of my interests. And it didn’t disappoint — it’s beautifully shot with a bopping soundtrack, well-crafted characters, and complex queer and hetero relationship dynamics. There is so much to unpack, it’s worth seeing multiple times.
But the first time I saw it, I was surprised to leave the theater feeling a profound sense of loss. Over the next few days, I found myself counting up all the ways I am not devastating like Tashi Duncan.
Tashi Duncan (played by Zendaya, obviously) is a star. She’s stunning, talented, charming, and smart — but also ambitious and selfish to the point of being cruel to herself and others.
Her fans adore her for these qualities. She’s a riveting competitor. But it also means that for the men in her life, she is both magnetic and ruinous — despite being completely honest about what she wants.
Devastating, I tell you.
I suddenly found myself performing mental gymnastics over how I could be more devastating. It is likely too late for me to become a tennis star, or any kind of professional athlete. (I did win a mid-Atlantic prep doubles tournament in 2009, just saying.) I am not a model. And I am certainly not mysterious — I tend to word vomit when I am nervous or excited, and I’m usually feeling one or the other.
The only way I could become closer to being as devastating as Tashi Duncan, I concluded, is to rekindle the ambition of my late teens and 20s.
Like many Millennials, I spent much of my 20s trying to do as much as possible. When I worked hard and achieved and still didn’t feel happy, I assumed I wasn’t working hard enough. I was desperate to carve out space for myself through achievements, because I thought that the only way to be somebody of worth in this world was to be someone notable for their accomplishments on paper.
I surrounded myself with similarly ambitious peers and colleagues, and for a while we all gobbled up lines for our resumes like Hungry Hippos. It wasn’t so much that everyone wanted to be working all the time; we just didn’t want to be churning out less than anyone else.
I was also pretty unhappy. I felt more worthless than not because I wasn’t the best at anything, which I viewed as a personal failure. Though I’d have fleeting victories, I never savored them. If I ever chose to stop and reflect, someone else had already accomplished more in that time, and once again I needed to step it up to get ahead.
I didn’t have as much time for people I loved. I was stretched so thin that sometimes, spending time with my family or spouse felt like an obligation, rather than something that I enjoy doing.
But man Tashi really sells the allure of ambition. Zendaya does too: She’s 28 and already has a full studio album, multiple modeling jobs, as well as a well-established acting career. Though Tashi is deeply unhappy (and fictional), and I do not know Zendaya at all, the pair of them made me want want to selectively forget all the pain of my ambitious era.
Since seeing Challengers, I’ve spoken to many a friend about the conflict I’ve felt of wanting to be devastating but also loving my current life. They agreed that we all want fame — who doesn’t want to be recognized for the star that they are? And, on a less pleasant note, who doesn’t want to be selfish every now and then with what they want to achieve?
My career coach/friend gave me perspective that resonated the most: If you do really want to be ambitious there are so many other spaces to do so. You can be ambitious in your hobbies, finances, and even relationships. But also, filling one bucket of your life while ignoring the others can give you a deeply uneven load to carry. You’ll likely get burned out no matter what you strive to be ambitious in.
I think the paradox of ambition is that it draws in the gaze of so many outsiders, while pushing those closest to us away. It can give us a wide net of shallow admiration, but takes up so much of our time it’s exceedingly difficult to have any real depth in those connections. It’s devastating — but not just for those around us, but for us, too.
In other words, being devastating comes with a cost. Being the opposite of that — life-affirming? social? an open-book community member? — also comes with the cost of being not nearly as alluring in the eyes of strangers.
The pollyannaish answer would be to say “Of course I’d choose meaningful connections every time!” I like to think that I would. It’s the right choice for me in the long run. But I also know that part of me will never stop wanting the power that comes with devastation.
My spouse told me I’m devastating. I think he felt he had to say that. We laugh together too much for him to actually see me that way.
I can only hope that I can successfully pretend to be devastating in moments where I decide that ambition in the short-run is worth it. I guess that’s the other paradox, though — if we are devastating, we’ll be too separated from others to actually know it.
There’s a lot more to Challengers than Tashi. There’s the boys’ relationship with each other over the years (they’re more than friends, you can’t tell me otherwise), there’s the idea of love they project onto Tashi, there’s the massive amount of tension created by all the artistic direction and the very sport of tennis itself.
I could go on and on, but you should just watch the movie yourself and share your thoughts with me instead ❤️
What else have I been up to?
I will take a minute to say I’m very proud of the work that I am doing. In January, I moved on to be the Director of Media at a foundation focused on ending smoking. In May, we finally announced our relaunch as Global Action to End Smoking.
I’m really proud of the messages we’ve been spreading, which focuses on centering people who smoke and their needs at the center of tobacco control. During my experience covering federal tobacco control and health policy, I didn’t really see leaders of those groups doing the same. This work is my small way of living out my personal values of equity and empathy.
As usual, I’ve been running and reading too.
I had some fun spring road and trail races that felt great because I’ve been feeling strong lately. The coolest race was being part of a Ragnar Ultra team, which is a team of 6 covering about 200 miles. We ran from Connecticut through Rhode Island to Massachusetts in all kinds of weather.
The books I’ve loved the most since last writing are the first two books in the Arc of Scythe trilogy. I’m waiting for the third from my library. I’m currently reading Fair Play: How sports shape the gender debate and Tender is the Flesh. To see my latest reads, follow me on Storygraph.
That’s all for now. Stay curious, friend! ❤️
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