Cat Person
From The Art and Popular Culture Encyclopedia
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"Looking at him like that, so awkwardly bent, his belly thick and soft and covered with hair, Margot recoiled. But the thought of what it would take to stop what she had set in motion was overwhelming; it would require an amount of tact and gentleness that she felt was impossible to summon."--"Cat Person" (2017) by Kristen Roupenian |
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"Cat Person" (2017) is a short story by Kristen Roupenian published in December 2017, in The New Yorker and went viral shortly afterwards.
Synopsis
The story follows in third person narrative the brief relationship between Margot and Robert, told from Margot's point of view. The two primarily interact via texting. A review in Slate writes "the story depicts the way texting supplants more organic methods of getting to know someone" allowing the formation of "imaginary constructs" of the other person, which fall apart upon meeting. The story depicts a bad sexual encounter. Slate describes it as a story of "how two people who don’t know or seemingly even really like each other can end up in bed". Margot later rejects Robert and the story ends on a bitter note.
Reception
BBC describes the short story as "being shared widely online as social media users discuss how much it relates to modern day dating". The Washington Post describes it as unique among the content in The New Yorker, because it resonated with a younger audience commenting, "for one of the first times, something in the magazine seemed to capture the experience not of print-oriented, older intellectuals but of Millennials." The story is the year's most downloaded fiction published in The New Yorker, and also one of the most read pieces overall of 2017. The Atlantic in its subtitle on the response to the story, notes that "The depiction of uncomfortable romance in "Cat Person" seems to resonate with countless women." Personal reactions have been largely, but not entirely, along gender lines (roughly akin to those to Jane Austen), and for many readers, it captures what it is like to be a woman in her twenties in 2017, including "the desperate need to be considered polite and nice at all costs." It has been described as a horror story, "triggering," and "The most gut-wrenching, relatable content I have ever read."
See also
- “Men are afraid women will laugh at them. Women are afraid men will kill them”
- Female sexuality
- Bad sex
- First date
- Me Too
- Pick Up Artist
- Negging
- Ghosting (relationships)
