Julie Klausner

It’s a shift from 1980, the year Alan Parker’s film debuted. Back then, Broadway and film musicals like “A Chorus Line,” “All That Jazz” and “Stayin’ Alive” showed the pursuit of fame as part of the American dream. Having a name worth remembering took hope, compromise and, most of all, backbreaking work. (It also, apparently, took synthesizers.) The success of “Fame” — and the long-running TV series that followed — showed just how voraciously American audiences would lap up a story about talented, multicultural youngsters sweating through the demoralization and muscle-cramping agony of hours upon hours of practice in order to “make it.” These kids danced because they couldn’t not dance, and they lived their lives with the clarity of movie tag lines: They’d never quit until they got their one shot. In the highly quotable opening montage of the TV show, Debbie Allen, as dance teacher Lydia Grant, barks, “Fame costs! And right here is where you start paying. In sweat.”

Some may cringe at the sentimentality of striving for that “big break” and paying for anything in the currency of perspiration. And indeed there is something inherently adolescent about the earnestness needed to pursue a career in the performing arts. But I, for one, can relate: As a kid in the early ’80s, all I wanted was to play Annie. I went out for production after production of that treacly Charles Strouse musical, hoping that if my belted version of “Maybe” didn’t seal the deal, my natural red hair would. After all, who wants to put a wig on a kid without leukemia? I was not alone in my starry-eyed ambitions. Musicals experienced a renaissance in the ’80s, an era, not coincidentally, known for narcissism. Little girls begged their parents to buy them leg warmers, to sign them up for tap and jazz, to drive them to auditions in hopes of becoming the Next Big Thing.

Unlike leg warmers, kids wanting to be famous is not a phenomenon exclusive to the early ’80s. Kids are born into the world believing they hold its center; wanting a spotlight and a mob’s rapt attention is only one extension of me-first juvenilia. But the late ’70s and early ’80s rolled out a series of musical fantasies that made singing to the rafters seem like the best thing to do while your acne cleared up. The meta-musicals I mentioned earlier joined blockbusters like “Footloose” and “Flashdance” in the popular imagination. But perhaps more than any of those ambition-drenched dance movies, it was “Fame” that normalized the concept of a generation of singers, actors, dancers and musicians old enough to be famous, but too young to drink or vote. It also paved the way for the swarm of competitive reality shows, from “American Idol” to “So You Think You Can Dance,” the winner of which is the star of the new “Fame.” It turns out, she does think she can dance — and she’s right!

There have been other shifts in our fame culture since 1980, of course. The new film, like the original, features characters who want to dance ballet, compose music and hit a high B-flat, but there’s also an aspiring rapper and a teenage producer who sweetens tracks from the comfort of his bedroom on his iMac, with Pro Tools. A more critical shift, however, is that the median age of mainstream stars has plummeted in two decades — especially for women — and the expiration date on a young person’s acting or singing career is steadily rivaling that of a dancer’s or a model’s.

Twenty years ago, when adults like Sigourney Weaver and Dustin Hoffman starred in movies, actors often spent their formative years honing their craft. Hoffman trained in Method at the Actors Studio, Weaver got a master of fine arts at the Yale School of Drama, and the careers of LaGuardia alums Robert De Niro, Al Pacino and Ben Vereen, to name a few, speak volumes to how studying the art of acting could pay off. But the sad truth is that, for teenagers craving fame today, it might not make sense to spend what are now the most castable years of their lives tucked away in a classroom. For better or worse, the modern training model might more closely resemble the nightmare territory of “Toddlers and Tiaras”; if you want a kid to know how to execute a perfect arabesque, you’d do best to start teaching her while she’s still in diapers. Besides, it’s absurd to think of a teenage kid “studying” acting for the sake of being a series regular on “One Tree Hill.”

When I was a kid and wanted to be Annie, yearning for fame was a flight of fancy typically limited to the gay kids and theater geeks. But that’s not the case anymore. President Obama’s message for kids to aspire to be “doctors and teachers, not just ballers and rappers” speaks to what’s become the prevailing ambition of kids across the country. A desire for fame — to be known, to be remembered — is perhaps part of what compels kids to post anything that crosses their minds to YouTube and Facebook, whether it’s brilliant or insipid. Inherent to the attraction of the Internet is the fleeting buzz of being known, even on a micro level. Every teenager wants to be special, and what’s more special than being famous?

How odd that, while teenagers regard pretty much everything in the world with sarcasm, the idea of pursuing the dream of “making it” as a singer, actor or dancer is still sacrosanct. Of course, the avenues for fame have exploded since 1980. Instead of schlepping to New York City to audition for Juilliard, a master violinist today might audition in his hometown for “America’s Got Talent,” hoping to nab the slot between the juggler and the “Stomp”-style bucket drummer. Prime-time TV has become vaudeville for young and old aspirants — though the emotionally fraught, adolescent-grade sincerity of performers makes them all seem like teenagers. In fact, the essence of reality TV relies on everyone behaving like high schoolers, from the new-moneyed 40-somethings on “Real Housewives,” who exclude one another from parties like mean girls, to the contestants on “Survivor,” who form clique-like alliances and stab each other in the back whenever they get the chance.

All of which makes actual kids studying at actual performing arts school seem mature by comparison — even dignified. Imagine that: The kid who knows all the words to “Pippin” is dignified. It only took a sea change in our pop culture — the one that made it so you and I both know who Kim Kardashian is — to make fame, as a goal in and of itself, something associated not with ability but with shamelessness. The name of the movie has never been “Talent” — only now are the two concepts more disparate than ever.

Unlike in the new “Fame” — which strives with no paucity of effort for street cred with its “Step Up” zazziness and its thumping hip-hop theme song — kids who hone their craft, who wait nervously in the wings of the theater, who actually bother to be excellent at what they do, are practically old-fashioned.

I contacted the LaGuardia High School and arranged an interview with a few acting students for this piece. I was hoping they’d contribute something that proved they were dedicated to their craft, that they had their eyes on a bigger prize than the flash-in-the-pan kind of stardom that’s, evidently, only describable with clichés. But, at the very minute our interview was scheduled, I got a call from one of the teachers: Sorry, they had to cancel, he explained. A big audition was coming up, and they were too busy rehearsing. 

I’m not much of a reality show fan. Besides the occasional TLC show about cake or polygamy, my DVR is otherwise packed with critically approved scripted television, like “Modern Family” and “Boardwalk Empire.” But despite the bottomless spate of new “Housewives” series that Bravo keeps trotting out, the “Real Housewives” franchise still fascinates and enthralls me.

Why? The “Real Housewives” shows represent one of the few remaining places on the increasingly tween-dominated TV landscape where I can still watch women older than the stars of “Gossip Girl.” What’s more, the rhythm of the dialogue on these shows (whether or not they’re producer-manipulated) reflects an improvisational cadence of conversation that I find, at its best, reminiscent of Nichols and May or the funniest scenes from “Curb Your Enthusiasm.” And finally, but most important, I credit my love of the “Housewives” franchise to my enduring fandom of character actresses.

Season 3 of “The Real Housewives of Atlanta,” which begins this Monday, Oct 4, and marks the addition of two new cast members, already looks to be a crowd-pleaser. The premiere episode features, among other bloggable scenes, a memorable shouting match between housewife Nene and her gay friend Dwight at a shop called the “B Chic Shoe Boutique.” And on Oct. 14, Bravo will launch the newest addition to the “Housewives” family: “The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills.” It stars Kelsey Grammer’s ex-wife, two of Kathy Hilton’s sisters, and a British femme fatale known as Lisa VanderPump. As Michael K from the blog Dlisted described it, the show seems to be “what the inside of Jackie Collins’ head looks like.” Sign me up.

It’s easier to enjoy the “Real Housewives” if you think of it as the new “Dynasty” — just like Aaron Spelling’s camp tour de force, these shows are ensemble soap operas that happen to also be comedies, starring real-life equivalents of characters played by, say, Jennifer Coolidge and Joanna Lumley. Even Lynda Erkiletian from the “D.C.” cast bears an uncanny resemblance to “Arrested Development’s” Jessica Walter; her costar Mary Schmidt Amons, the spitting image of Stockard Channing.

Over the last 10 years, the trend has been for shows to write for the funny “character” male lead (read: overweight guy), and cast a pretty wife who won’t massacre a joke, but doesn’t have enough of a personality of her own to stand on. Despite the occasional “mom” cameo on prime time (think Jan Hooks as Jenna’s mom on “30 Rock,” or Beverly D’Angelo playing opposite Busy Phillips on “Cougar Town”), the majority of television still sways toward the casting of generically pretty young women in its leading roles — blond, thin, under the age of 35, with non-ethnic noses. And even today’s most formidable, talented comic actresses tend to have looks that are somewhat interchangeable: “Community’s” Gillian Jacobs, “Forgetting Sarah Marshall’s” Kristen Bell, “Glee’s” Heather Morris.

With all due respect — I know America loves its blondes — but whither Teri Garr? Judy Holiday? Is Kate Hudson all our generation has to speak of when it comes to Goldie Hawn’s legacy? Because if so, that is horrible. The “Real Housewives” franchise runs against that trend: They’re shows centered around a cast of witty, strong middle-aged women — who consistently make me LOL.

Maybe I’m biased because I’m over 30 and I wasn’t raised with the Nickelodeon and Disney TV show model (which features performers that are the same age as their target viewers), but my taste preferences have always skewed toward entertainment starring, well, grown-ups. I may be in the minority, but I just find adults over 35 more interesting. I grew up with “Designing Women,” “Murphy Brown” and “The Golden Girls” on TV, and watching “Troop Beverly Hills,” “Working Girl” and “Steel Magnolias” in the theaters. Leading roles that would, today, be played by Gwyneth Paltrow or Rachel Bilson then went to genuine comedic ingénues like Julie Hagerty and Joan Cusack. The ’70s and ’80s were kinder eras to character actresses — before the time when somehow, Cameron Diaz became considered a “comedienne” — and the popularity of shows like “Real Housewives” prove how hungry audiences are, still, for personalities, not just the Photoshop-perfect skin-having and body fat-deficient mainstays of Us Magazine’s “Who Wore It Better?” feature.

The dialogue on the “Real Housewives” is a combination of hilarious malapropisms (like when “New Jersey’s” Danielle Staub compared cast mate Caroline Manzo to the matriarch on “The Sopranos” by saying “she’s not Carmello”) and repeatable nuggets of genius (like Nene’s rhetorical exclamation to Kim, “Is your wig squeezing your head too tight, heifer?”). It makes even the most vérité setups and punch lines from scripted shows seem canned; the popularity of reality television may have brought with it an expectation that its dialogue sound somewhat authentic, but even the best writers couldn’t replicate such marvelously unique and broad characters. The “Housewives” all have personalities grounded in character-based comedy; I could listen to them talk about anything.

And the “Real Housewives” shows are awash with timelessly funny archetypes — particularly the “Cool Mom.” Just like Amy Poehler’s character in “Mean Girls,” there are plenty of “Real Housewives” aching to be friends — not just moms — to their teen and tween daughters. Think of “O.C.” housewife Lynne Curtin’s two-seasons-ago shopping spree with her daughters at Intermix, or “Jersey” star Jacqueline Laurita’s mother-daughter “sexy face” contest/photo session with her teenage nightmare, Ashley. Stealing focus from your own daughter is one of the many hilarious — and intrinsically female — characteristics of the un-self-aware mother: These are funny women, whether or not they’re in on what makes them so funny.

That said, I do think the pendulum is slowly shifting back to a place where more character leads fill out a cast, at least when it comes to television (mainstream film is far blander — as I write this, a giant poster for Katherine Heigl’s latest feces-stained baby rom-com stares at me from my apartment view of Houston Street, in Lower Manhattan). When I watch Amy Poehler anchor the cast of “Parks and Recreation” or Jane Lynch steal scenes from tight-abbed teenage belters on “Glee,” or I see some of the choices the female cast members of “SNL” make — whether it’s Kristen Wiig’s undermining “Penelope” character or Nasim Pedrad’s nerdy high schooler who just wants to hang out with her mom at parties — I have hope that this next generation of character actresses will be appreciated for what makes them unique. It may not be the renaissance of riches ushered in around the birth of the women’s movement and the rise of auteur filmmaking (which brought us Shelley Duvall, Lily Tomlin — not to mention the first “SNL” cast, with Laraine Newman, Gilda Radner and Jane Curtin), but it’s a start. Until then, I have the “Housewives” to keep me warm.

Babies, babies, babies! They’re everywhere, aren’t they? In our eyes, in our thoughts, in our arms, in our dreams. Sometimes, in our dreams, they are riding alpacas or juggling tacos — but that doesn’t mean those dreams are necessarily about babies. Look, I’m not Freud.

Here’s the thing: if you want to be at home with your baby, and you feel like your kiddo is all you can think about, you don’t have to hear it from me that a career transition is probably on deck, at least for the time being. If your current gig is a full-time one, and your schedule is preventing you from doing what you need in order to feel like you have a life, and not just a job, it sounds like you need a more flexible gig, or to work toward taking a break until your partner finds work.

But here’s what I have to say that you do need to hear: There is nothing wrong with what you are asking for! If I may temporarily don my bio-deterministic hat, I think an inherent part of being female has to do with the desire for a kind of fluidity in our lives. Which is a fancy/fruity way of saying that there are all kinds of phases of a woman’s career, and it’s okay to want to work full time in a breadwinner role at one point, and stay home with your baby at another time.

You don’t have to apologize to anyone for supporting or not supporting non-traditional gender roles. What you do have to do is make sure your family is fed and provided for, and, at the same time, make sure you’re not putting yourself in the position where you’ll look back and regret not spending more time with your apple-cheeked little baby girl, who (I’m guessing?) has chubby little fingers and toes and the world’s most squeezeable tuchus. BABIES, BABIES, BABIES!

I advise you to transition out of your predicament in a way that splits the difference between pulling a full Steve Slater, and acting out, from your cubicle, a reverse-gender version of “The cat’s in the cradle and the silver spoon.” Frankly, in a perfect world, you should have more maternity leave or be able to work from home. And if you haven’t already, discuss those possibilities with your supervisor before going any further.

But if those options are not available, I’d advise you to start sniffing around for some consultant gigs that may utilize your skills more efficiently than your current job. Visit a career counselor on your lunch break and get notes on your resume. Do whatever networking you can with your daughter in tow, and online. And have a talk with your husband about the possibility of shifting the responsibilities around so that you can spend your time doing what you want to do. Like taking your daughter’s cheeks in your hands and being like “There you are! There are your cheeks! Look at you! I’ve got your cheeks!” and so on. Good luck, and keep me posted on that little one.

On a personal note, this will be the last installation of Lady Business, which was meant to be a summer series. I want to thank my readers and Salon for giving me the chance to run Broadsheet’s first ever advice column! It’s been a pleasure and a privilege hanging out this summer with all of you. For those who’ve responded in the comments section with constructive feedback and kind words: thank you so much. If you want more of me, you can follow me on Twitter, read my blog or my book, or, if you hate reading, stay tuned for its television version on HBO. Oh, and if you don’t want more of me? Well. May God have mercy on your souls.

And as for your extremely generous multiple choice attempt at understanding why your boss would ever, EVER, think it would be OK to rummage around his business in a place of business, that’s just a case of inappropriate empathy. There are worse diagnoses! But of the choices you’ve laid out, I’d give a resounding yes to your hunch that his public pubis-tousling is most definitely a “Bad Manners” thing, and whether he’s in need of a dermatologist or he’s just “hard at work,” so to speak, his reasons for relieving himself in front of you are so irrelevant, I actually just got angry typing that right now.

This problem — which is, by the way, his problem way more than yours, though it doesn’t seem that way because you’re the one who’s uncomfortable and he’s the one who’s merrily rough-housing his groin — has “HR” written all over it. I would strongly recommend that you visit someone in the Human Resources department and voice your discomfort. They should be the ones to talk to him about it and protect you by keeping you anonymous — which is absolutely reasonable, because he could very well be raking his junk in front of any number of employees — not to deny you of any, um, flattery.

Any company sexual harassment policy should include his behavior as an example of something that is absolutely in no way cool. Whether or not he considers his behavior a subconscious tic, a medical condition or a sexual come-on, however bizarre (remember Clarence Thomas’ winning lines?), touching your crotch in front of your female underling is not something that you can do. So consult those boring packets you were given on your first day, and go have a closed-door convo with the dude or lady who handed them out.

And in the meantime, try to keep any interactions with your boss either on the phone or over IM. At least in the latter case, his hands will be occupied with the keyboard. That poor, gross keyboard.

Greetings, Future Would-Be Competitor!

Advance congrats on making the big schlep to New York, where professional writers suffer and strive in unparalleled numbers! You’re doing the right thing by coming here, though I can’t necessarily condone your decision to go the grad school route with the same amount of conditionless confidence (though I’m certainly aware that you didn’t, ahem, ask). From my experience, I think that when it comes to writing things that aren’t novels, the best way to learn how to do it is to farm yourself out for freelance gigs like a meth addict juggling plates. Do it a lot is what I mean. Take non-paying assignments for the experience, meet people in the process, and use those relationships to get yourself more work, becoming better and better at writing while you do.

However! Being a newcomer to the Big City is no short task, and the structure of grad school, however expensive (and, combined with the life expenses of a typical New Yorker, prohibitively so, unless you have some kind of sheik benefactor), is often helpful to aspirants looking to learn the ins and outs of stringing a sentence together, while making contacts in the process. So, good luck with your MFA, and I won’t snark on it any further. I’ve been burned myself in the “I”m going to get a master’s degree!” department, only to wish later that I had the cash equivalent of those years, but I think regret is useless in the absence of time travel, so let’s all tuck our tales and execute our learned lessons going forward, which is what time does anyway.

As far as staying sane and achieving balance in a competitive field, I think that’s a matter for you and the more sympathetic of your friends, your yoga instructor, your chaplain or rabbi, or the person you complain to weekly who gives you your Pristiq prescription. In other words, whatever balance it is you seek will come, by definition, from the parts of your life that are not embedded in the work areas of it, and whatever perspective you have on it will come from your philosophical worldview. As for achieving some kind of sanity within the profession, I will happily advise you from the experience I’ve accrued in my last (mumble-mutter-I am old) years as a writer.

If you are making money writing, you are doing great. If you can support yourself writing, you are a success. I don’t care if you’re writing textbooks or Pulitzer Prize-winning articles for weighty publications of world renown: If you’re writing and it’s paying the bills, consider yourself a successful writer. Beyond that — when it comes to Twitter followers, book sales, and pretty much anything else you mentioned besides emotional weight gain — which I’d discuss with any of the above advisors, especially the doler out of antidepressants, because there are some meds that will puff you out like the cotton candy cloud Katy Perry’s resting on and others that will tighten you up like a knotted shoelace — you are really talking about fame, which is different from success, and by a wide margin.

Try as hard as you can not to worry about whether you are destined to become the next author of that book about Food and Oprah and Women and God, in that order. Look to your short-term goals as they present themselves, and try as best you can to do so with blinders on, because jealousy of your colleague’s latest achievement will only bring you further away from your own discretion as to what it is you actually want to do. It’s just distracting to get hung up on Suzie’s feature on Chelsea Clinton’s wedding on UsMagazine.com or Margie’s listicle on the Daily Beast of the Nation’s 15 Wealthiest Dogs, when all it is you came here to do was, say, financial reporting.

For the time being, focus on the formidable task of moving to New York City and surviving your first semester. Ace your assignments. Be nice to people. Listen like it’s your job (it kind of is). Whether or not you find an apartment big enough to stash all of your “word baggage,” the mere fact that you’re taking the steps that you are to get here deserves acclaim. So, hooray! Here is some acclaim for you! Now get to work on your writing skills so you can start paying your rent on the merit of your work at some point, and never mind the fame talk, the clatter of irrelevant accomplishments that are not your own, or the self-doubt that clouds the inner voice of any writer, like so many Katy Perry-hosting cotton candy doom harbingers. Clear them away and do your work. The rest will come soon after.

Julie

My Dear Intern,

In the parlance of the newspaper world, it looks from your question that you have a veritable backlog of issues that need addressing; I’ll do the best I can to answer the ones you’ve left on my stoop.

It seems, first and foremost, that you’re having a hard time grappling with your first experience as one of the lone females in a predominantly male working environment. This is a big rite of passage, and not something to be taken lightly! In fact, the most important motivation behind any internship, besides the personal fulfillment found in schlepping salads and photocopying documents, is that you have the opportunity to figure out whether you’d want to make a career out of the industry you’re spying on. Keep that in mind when the stress of the gig is driving you bats: You’re there to learn about that particular office; you’re not married to a workplace kind enough to let you do their grunt work for free.

Moving on to a bigger concern I have from your letter: A bustling, bromantic, fratlike work environment is one thing, but your “distinct impression” that your supervisor wants you to sleep with him is another. I would need to know more about the details of your hunch before counseling you on the matter of whether you should act more like “one of the guys,” at a bar or otherwise. Because while unwanted sexual advances on interns have certainly been known to sell plenty of papers, they shouldn’t be part of anyone’s experience on the side of putting them into print. (Or anybody’s! I’m going to go out on a limb here and say I’m strongly against sexual harassment.)

If your boss is making you feel uncomfortable, or putting you in a quid pro quo situation, meet at once with whoever hired you, or talk to your internship advisor at your school. This is more important than anything else.

Let us now discuss the politics of the bar, and the newspapermen who frequent it.

You’re right in that many of the decisions concerning who rises in a company, and why, are made off-site in social settings like bars, restaurants, baseball games and dinner parties. But just as nobody should ever force you to participate in, say, a workwide health spa retreat, complete with mandatory Bikram yoga and wheat grass enemas, so, too, you needn’t go beyond the frontiers of your comfort level, whether it concerns your physical flexibility, your tolerance for G.I. symptoms, or your propensity for hard liquor. In other words, you don’t need to “get sloppy” at a drinking session with colleagues if you don’t want to. In fact, it’s to your advantage that you do not, and that’s exclusive of your potentially lecherous supervisor.

When it comes to your either-or mental diptych of “get really drunk” or “avoid all social interaction with my co-workers,” I think what makes the most sense for you to do is to create your own gray area (a concept I’m looking into developing as a self-help book, or a hair regrowth kit for the elderly). What if you went out for a drink with the guys from the office and limited yourself to one or two rounds, then spent an extra half-hour sipping Diet Coke and getting to know the people you work with? Keeping your wits about you while, at the same time, remaining social and friendly, is a good skill to learn from a summer spent setting type or fact-checking Op-Eds, or providing lozenges to the people whose job it is to scream “Stop the presses!” — or whatever it is people still do at newspapers these days, besides hire unpaid interns.

But, of course, the above advice is exclusive of a scenario in which you’re being sexually harassed. If you are indeed in an outright unfriendly environment perpetuated by your supervisor, please talk to somebody — even if you’re unsure. Before you raise a glass of whatever spirits or cola, I want to protect you, and all girls everywhere, from ever being dubbed a “portly pepperpot,” however brilliantly, by tabloids who made a mockery out of Bill Clinton’s indiscretions with a girl in his office not much older than his daughter. I look forward to the day when being called “another Monica Lewinsky” refers to the hard work behind a master’s degree in social psychology from the London School of Economics, after spending the first act of one’s life deflecting the shame of a scandal that should have rested on the shoulders of a man old enough to have known better. But until then, keep your head screwed on, and remember: If this isn’t the gig for you, you can bet the Sunday coupon section you’ll find a better fit somewhere else soon.

Julie