User: valancy Date: 30 Oct 2005 22:08 (UTC) Subject: (no subject)

*applauds*

LJ seems to be right on target today. Val wants fic: Val gets fic. Val wants rant: Val gets rant. Val wants $1,000,000...?

User: movingfinger Date: 31 Oct 2005 03:58 (UTC) Subject: (no subject)

Val wants $1,000,000...?

Val follows NYT's advice and marries money?

User: valancy Date: 08 Nov 2005 01:08 (UTC) Subject: (no subject)

Val needs millionaire with heart of gold.

*standing applause*

Brava! Brava!

From "The Immutable Laws of Maureen Dowd":


THE FIRST IMMUTABLE LAW OF DOWD: The first and most important rule is what might be termed the People magazine principle: All political phenomena can be reduced to caricatures of the personalities involved. [...]

THE SECOND IMMUTABLE LAW OF DOWD: It's easier to whine than to take a stand or offer solutions. [...]

THE THIRD IMMUTABLE LAW OF DOWD: It is better to be cute than coherent. [...]

THE FOURTH IMMUTABLE LAW OF DOWD: The particulars of my consumer-driven, self-involved life are of universal interest and reveal universal truths. [...]

THE FIFTH IMMUTABLE LAW OF DOWD: Europeans are always right.


Worth a look.

User: fengi Date: 31 Oct 2005 16:15 (UTC) Subject: (no subject)

The Laws of Dowd and the Laws of Brooks are remakably similar.

User: the_red_shoes Date: 30 Oct 2005 22:43 (UTC) Subject: (no subject)

I'm a feminist. I've been a feminist since the first issue of "Ms." came out in 1972. I shave my legs. I wear skirts to work. And I beat up people who imply that I can't do my job because I'm female. For over thirty years I've been hearing that feminists are unattractive and unfeminine. Get over it.
Some women look around at 40 and wonder what hit them. Some men look around at 40 and wonder what hit them. It's called middle age, and it's not for wimps.
If you're a kitten, good on you. If you aren't a kitten and pretend to be one in order to catch a guy, you're stuck pretending to be one for the rest of your life. Does that sound like fun? Do you want to be 55 and still stamping your little foot when you're wronged? Are you willing to renounce forever the pleasure of saying "Cut the bullshit, I'm tired"?
Speaking of which, men who are afraid of strong, sarcastic women are not worth having, unless you're willing to put your strength and sarcasm into a safety-deposit box to be redeemed after widowhood.

YES. ((abject fangrrrl worship))

User: casperflea Date: 30 Oct 2005 22:50 (UTC) Subject: (no subject)

Amen my sistah. And I've always hated Maureen Dowd. One gets this impression that this is her "I'm approaching middle-aged and nobody wants to marry me even though I wear heels!" book. Honey, have you considered that it's not the feminism, it's you? Also, you're not that feminist. Really.

User: forodwaith Date: 30 Oct 2005 22:52 (UTC) Subject: (no subject) Keyword: genius

Hear hear!

User: arliss Date: 30 Oct 2005 22:57 (UTC) Subject: (no subject) Keyword: Ha'ween Linus

Thank goodness somebody said what I've been feeling and wanting to say, only in a rational and lucid fashion that isn't all fashed up with "mwvhah! inarticulate!anger!vhezhack, rrrahrgh!"

Which, you know, wins no advocates nor adherents. So, glad it got said. Well.

User: susano Date: 30 Oct 2005 22:59 (UTC) Subject: (no subject)

Brava Betsy!

User: dichroic Date: 30 Oct 2005 23:39 (UTC) Subject: (no subject)

I'm a feminist. I've been a feminist since the first issue of "Ms." came out in 1972. I think I've been one even longer. I was born in 1967, and I doubt my reading comprehension skills were up to Ms. by 1972, but I can't remember ever thinking that other people were better than me by reason of sex. Or that I shouldn't be friends with boys and do everything they did except use urinals.

On the other hand, I give Ms. and the feminists who came before me a lot of the credit for why my culture didn't beat the sense of euqality out of me as I aged. Like all of us, I was born free .... but who knows what forms of servitude I could have been brainwashed into?

User: jesseh Date: 30 Oct 2005 23:51 (UTC) Subject: (no subject)

Oh, I'm so glad to see this, because I have to write an Op-Ed for class by Wednesday, and I wanted to use my rant about the 50s-era propoganda that convinced people that the housewife was the ideal, and how it's always been bullshit, but I was looking for a current "hook." This is TOTALLY IT.

User: tesserae_ Date: 30 Oct 2005 23:56 (UTC) Subject: (no subject)

Well said, Jonquil. I remember a quote from my women's studies classes that said, essentially, that rich white women get to be up on that pedestal because some other woman is down on her knees polishing it.

...if you aren't a kitten... you're stuck pretending to be one for the rest of your life

Somewhat like faking that first orgasm, or pretending to be interested in football.

User: veejane Date: 31 Oct 2005 03:05 (UTC) Subject: (no subject)

My big revelation about the outward appearances of feminism came when I was in the secretary pool in Washington DC, summers in college. Quite a few women did not shave their legs, and just wore pantyhose overtop. (Everyone wore pantyhose; it was that kind of secretary pool.) I asked, roundabout, whether it was a statement, not to shave your legs, and one woman was like, No, but my husband loves it.

And instantly the leg hair = humorless lonely harpy equation was destroyed.

User: madrobins Date: 31 Oct 2005 04:35 (UTC) Subject: (no subject)

I will say, the tenor of Dowd's article is not one of approving the "me so cute and kittenish don't you want to take me home and take care of me" thing. She considers herself a feminist, will pay half the check, and (even tho' she likes dresses and heels) wants someone who doesn't have to be kowtowed to. She's looking at this apparent swell of upper middle class women who want to be 50s girls with benes, and blinking in dumb confusion.

I think the one line that made my head explode more than any other was the woman (quoted from another Times piece a few months ago, the one about all the high powered executive women who are giving it all up for motherhood) who said that her mother told her she could be a good mother or a have a career, not one or the other. Because, honestly, I feel sorry for the kids who become the obsessive focus of a woman who has given up her career in order to be a good mommy. Creepy.

User: jonquil Date: 31 Oct 2005 08:03 (UTC) Subject: (no subject)

Well, she's also convinced that the chickies are right, and that the reason she, personally, Maureen Pulitzer-Prize-winning McDowd, doesn't have a honey is that the men are threatened.

Re: motherhood
"She's the kind of person who lives for other people. You can tell the other people by their hunted expression."

User: chrysantza Date: 01 Nov 2005 05:05 (UTC) Subject: (no subject) Keyword: jen niles: flying kitty

(Here ultimately via Laura at 11D and clicking a few links):

What MoDo does not mention about the Louise Story story - the one where Yale girls allegedly wanted to be stay-home moms, which IIRC had the girl whose mom told her she had to choose between kid or career - was that the girls themselves later complained that Story misrepresented them and quoted them out of context, as well as massaging her data. It's all in the Crooked Timber archives.

What this tells me is that the NYT is just about at the level of the "Weekly World News" when it comes to quality journalism.

Everything you said.

Particularly the first point, though. Because of your education, you might have access to opportunities that most women never will. This does not make you a more worthy person. It makes you an unimaginative one.

I get very tired of middle-class educated women thinking that all women's lives are like theirs.

User: frankie_ecap Date: 31 Oct 2005 09:11 (UTC) Subject: (no subject)

Me, sorry.

User: jonquil Date: 31 Oct 2005 15:11 (UTC) Subject: (no subject)

If I hear ONE MORE "All Things Considered" essay about the trials of a comfortable suburban life, and about how universal they are... I may write a strong letter. Repeatedly.

A couple of weeks ago I heard one about how difficult it was to arrange a family dinner and game-playing evening because of everybody's schedules. Oh, the angst.

# Some women look around at 40 and wonder what hit them. Some men look around at 40 and wonder what hit them. It's called middle age, and it's not for wimps.
# If you're a kitten, good on you. If you aren't a kitten and pretend to be one in order to catch a guy, you're stuck pretending to be one for the rest of your life. Does that sound like fun? Do you want to be 55 and still stamping your little foot when you're wronged? Are you willing to renounce forever the pleasure of saying "Cut the bullshit, I'm tired"?
# Speaking of which, men who are afraid of strong, sarcastic women are not worth having, unless you're willing to put your strength and sarcasm into a safety-deposit box to be redeemed after widowhood.

These three things are comforting thoughts. That business about putting strength and sarcasm in a safety-deposit box to be redeemed after widowhood is one of the reasons I don't pretend to be other than what I am. To my thinking, if I can't be me in a love relationship or marriage, if I have to circumcise my confidence and certainties, I'm putting on a pair of extremely uncomfortable shoes.

This reminds me of a post and the subsequent exchanges from yesterday that still puzzle me.

User: movingfinger Date: 31 Oct 2005 14:45 (UTC) Subject: (no subject)

Rich women who want to stay home with their children are Right On. Poor women who do so because they can't find child care and/or employment are, gosh, really in a bind, aren't they?

User: fengi Date: 31 Oct 2005 16:12 (UTC) Subject: (no subject)

1. I cling feebly to the belief that it is possible to do lifestyle reporting and not make an ass of oneself with lame generalizations based on talking to one's circle of friends, but the NYT and Salon is beating it out of me.

2. In the piece Dowd talks to some exec from Maxim who reveals women talk to him about wanting to be like the girls in his magazine - good lord, a magazine exec claims his magazine has power! that's evidence of...see #1.

3. Dowd channels Cathy. Aaakkk!

4. Since when is a bunch of movies by men about male female relationships say much about how women view feminism?

4. Dowd discovers that holy shit, vain young good looking people want to dress sexy! Feminism must be dead. (This also applies a wee bit to the "Female Chauvanist Pig" book, or at least the simplistic reviews of said book).

User: cofax7 Date: 31 Oct 2005 19:53 (UTC) Subject: (no subject)

Pss- you've been linked to by sivacracy.net.

User: dre_l Date: 31 Oct 2005 20:05 (UTC) Subject: (no subject)

So those of us who shave our legs and wear birkenstocks are what? Yeesh. Methinks MoDowd is still bitter because Michael Douglas threw her over for Catherine Zeta-Jones.

User: _swallow Date: 31 Oct 2005 20:14 (UTC) Subject: (no subject) Keyword: visual joke

Dowd's tone has definitely got to be sarcastic!

Many women now do not think of domestic life as a "comfortable concentration camp," as Betty Friedan wrote in "The Feminine Mystique," where they are losing their identities and turning into "anonymous biological robots in a docile mass." Now they want to be Mrs. Anonymous Biological Robot in a Docile Mass.

But the article is kind of disorganized, I think-- she's just sort of arguing by example and anecdote, and, as you say, she seems entirely concerned with an urban upper-class.

User: jonquil Date: 31 Oct 2005 20:25 (UTC) Subject: (no subject)

Part of the time she's sarcastic. Other parts of the time she's complaining that she can't get a date because men fear strong women.

User: _swallow Date: 31 Oct 2005 20:28 (UTC) Subject: (no subject)

I guess I assumed she was being ironic then, too.