I am a feminist. I studied postmodern feminist theory at Uni and felt confident that the progress and passion behind feminism offered by deconstructionism — the cultural and linguistic tools a women would need to redefine her story and her self — would result in a female self-empowerment much more substantial than the hyper-sexual self-objectification of Manolo Blahnik feminism. I am not the only one asking the question, “What Ever Happened to Feminism?” Check out Body Politic by Ingrid Sischy from the T Style Magazine (yes, I read it).

“Body Politic
By INGRID SISCHY
Published: February 25, 2007Last fall I was stopped in my tracks as I walked into a show in Milan during the collections, and a male friend, who’d just witnessed the same debacle that I had, raised his eyebrows and asked, “What happened to feminism???? It’s a question that is being asked repeatedly these days, and for good reason. The only word for the fashion collection we’d just seen was “bimbo??? — clothes put out on the runway without irony, without quotation marks, without any raison d’être other than saving money on material. Over the course of the next two weeks I gave myself a little assignment. I’d watch the runways in Milan and Paris and check off those clothes that signified a throwback to the long past of objectifying women. And on the other hand I’d put a little star down when the designer seemed to be wanting to take us into the future with a view of women that reflected self-possession.

Good thing I still like swings. Of course there were exceptions, designers who were true to the present, but by and large it was backward and forward and backward and forward. Then there were the designers who left earth entirely and showed a universe of female droids and cyborgs. These were the ones who, intentionally or not, illuminated the big challenge facing women’s fashion, best described by tweaking the famous tag line from “Star Trek???: women’s fashion, the final frontier . . . to boldly go where no one has gone before.

That’s easier said than done. As Miuccia Prada said to me, “The problem with new ideas about feminism is that there has been so little public discussion of the subject.??? Well, that’s changing, big time — if not in fashion at least in the art world, which has historically been the first place where a new perspective begins. In fact, after it seemed as though the subject of feminism had been put on simmer, the art world is cooking with gas again, not just for a new generation of feminist artists but in retrospect too. The year started out with a symposium at the Museum of Modern Art, once such a perfect target for feminist critics, who felt it was stuck in the Stone Age as far as the representation of women goes. Now there are bicoastal extravaganzas planned for this spring: the Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles will stage “WACK! Art and the Feminist Revolution??? from March 4 to July 16, and the Brooklyn Museum opens “Global Feminisms??? on March 23. The show celebrates a new center for feminist art, anchored by the permanent installation of Judy Chicago’s famous “The Dinner Party.??? How these exhibitions will loop back to fashion and the creative/commercial balancing act that designers have to do is anybody’s guess, but bets are that there will be a trickle-down effect, as there often is.

What’s interesting is that if one goes through the iconic works of the first, second and third waves of feminist writers, there is so little that actually addresses fashion. Rereading Simone de Beauvoir, Kate Millet, Shulamith Firestone, Germaine Greer, Lucy Lippard, Linda Nochlin and so many others, I was struck by the dearth of attention to this subject, which after all has everything to do with how identity is constructed for the outside world. There’s no lack of thinking when it comes to inner life, working life, creative life and public life, but when fashion comes up, the attitude tends to be knee-jerk and programmatic. Take Greer’s climactic moment at the end of “The Female Eunuch,??? where she creates a sort of bill of rights, inciting women to: “. . . refuse hobbles and deformity and take possession of your body and glory in its power, accepting its own laws of loveliness.??? In fact some of the most powerful, liberated women I know choose to hobble around in the craziest skyscraper shoes. “The higher the heel,??? they say, “the better I feel.???

But the other part of Greer’s declaration — that women have the right to control their own bodies — is as resonant today as it was when she wrote it nearly 40 years ago. One can see that drama being played out in the fashion arena right now, with the debate over skinny models brought to a head by the deaths last fall of two South American catwalkers from complications of anorexia. The hysteria that resulted led to a spectacle of ignorance, hypocrisy and bureaucracy. If the issue weren’t so serious, some of the solutions proposed by bureaucrats — like models being weighed in like boxers or jockeys — would be funny. But unfortunately they don’t just infringe on everything that we are supposed to hold dear in the department of human liberties, they also display so little understanding of the disease they are trying to combat that it is frightening. So is the tendency to lump together girls who are naturally skinny with those who are sick, two very different realities. Hey, as someone who likes her fries, I’m all for bringing back a Rubenesque shape as the height of fashion, but the fact is that perceptions of beauty cannot, and will not, be dictated by laws. That’s where consciousness comes in. At the center of it all, for anorexics, but also for each of us, lies the issue of control, or as Barbara Kruger wrote in one of her most unforgettable artworks: “Your body is a battleground.??? Hopefully you win.”

Manolo Blahnik Feminism: The Right to Choo’s

I call the new feminism Manolo Blahnik Feminism, which is a super-sexual, super-sexy, and super-confusing form of self-empowerment. Ariel Levy calls it “raunch culture” and I believe that it is going to blow up in American women’s faces.

I believe very strongly that there are too many dangerous contradiction in the new feminism, in the new American woman.

I attended a panel on gender differences in the new feminism and my question to the panel was, “I understand how empowering strappy stilettos, butt jeans, bare bellies, and camisole tops are for the modern woman. It is all about taking back the sex, taking back the gaze, reclaiming the control of what is cute, what is hot, what is sexy, it about taking back control, reclaiming feelings of pride in the body, pride in the shape and tan earned from an active, outdoorsy life. That’s all fine and good. Unfortunately, we men never got the memo. I never got the memo.”

In fact, I feel sort of like a fox in a hen house. Why? Well, all of my old-world, unenlightened, seduction techniques work now better than ever! In fact, the truth is, I am really too nice for the Manolo Blahnik k feminist.

The Manolo Blahnik feminist wants to be taken, wants to find a real man, wants to take risks and have a great time; she pursues a doctrine of devil may care.

Well, no matter what the Manolo Blahnik Feminist thinks she wants and no matter what she thinks she’s doing, she is actually walking into a very dangerous trap.

We men are not responding to this self-empowerment with amazement and respect, we’re responding to it by licking our lips, by taking advantage, by rubbing our hands together, and by trying not to jinx this out of being. We are pretty well convinced that what is happening won’t last: the Manolo Blahnik feminist fancies herself the aggressor, the buyer, the pursuer, the seducer. And we men are what she is after.

All we see is, “man that girl is fine — I’d like some of that.”

As men in such a seller’s market, we don’t have to choose. We can date another willing girl every night. We can push sex much faster than we ever could believe. The three-date rule? Ha! That’s the official rule, but now the first date counts from the night we first met. Oral sex on the first date has sort of become de rigueur — if you want a second date.

Instead of getting control, the Manolo Blahnik Feminist has relinquished control to us men.

And even worse, this is a very dangerous game. We men are bigger, stronger, and not all of us are so nice. I personally have a lot of experience with women who are survivors — survivors not just of dating or their 20s, but survivors of sexual abuse and rape.

I have loved them, I have befriended them, and I worked through relationships with women who have survived sexual abuse and rape.

Its always an ugly story and the world is never the same. We just have not received the memo. This kind of exciting, naughty, passionate, irresponsible, reckless indulgence in “raunch culture” is going to result in one hell of a cultural hangover.

Many women will be unable to recover from this self-indulgence with any semblance of faith, trust, hope, or intactness.

And many men, too.

When it comes right down to it, who would have any of the right stuff to even have faith in marriage, the family, and children after indulging in such self-destructive, self-loathing chaos?

Not I.

I am not sure if modern women have it very good. Not nearly as good as would be expected. I attended college at a high point for feminism an academia, when a woman would still identify with being a feminist.

Not any more.

Not Liberating, After All
How did feminists end up in bed with Hugh Hefner?

BY WENDY SHALIT
Wednesday, September 21, 2005 12:01 a.m. EDT

Ariel Levy attended Wesleyan University in the 1990s, and she doesn’t feel the better for it. It was a place where “group sex, to say nothing of casual sex, was de rigueur.” It was a place where they had “coed showers, on principle.” When Ms. Levy suggested to a department head that it would be nice to have at least one course in the traditional literary canon, she was dismissed with icy contempt. Yet elsewhere on campus a professor of the humanities taught a course on pornography featuring, um, detailed textual analysis.

It was all supposed to be so liberating. But it wasn’t, as Ms. Levy argues forcefully in “Female Chauvinist Pigs.” It was merely the academic groundwork for what she calls “raunch culture,” now so ubiquitous that we take it for granted. Young women wear shirts emblazoned with “Porn Star” across the chest. Teen stores sell “Cat in the Hat” thong underwear. Parents treat their daughters’ friends to “cardio striptease” classes for birthday parties. This is liberation?

Ms. Levy is baffled. “Why,” she wondered, “is laboring to look like Pamela Anderson empowering?” Why did female Olympic athletes pose for Playboy before the summer 2004 Games? Why did Katie Couric feel the need to point to her cleavage and gush “these are actually real!” when she guest-hosted “The Tonight Show” a couple of years ago?

Some sort of pervasive pressure, apparently, requires “everyone who is sexually liberated . . . to be imitating strippers and porn stars.” Ms. Levy describes the perfect distillation of this impulse–a social group called CAKE that hosts steamy, hooking-up parties in New York and London. CAKE makes big bucks advertising “feminism in action”–it claims to be the place where “sexual equality and feminism finally meet”–but its events are indistinguishable from those held at the Playboy Mansion.

The surface logic of such conduct is fairly simple, notes Ms. Levy. “Women had come so far,” or so the thinking went, that “we no longer needed to worry about objectification or misogyny.” If male chauvinist pigs “regarded women as pieces of meat, we would outdo them and be Female Chauvinist Pigs: women who make sex objects of other women and of ourselves.”

Well, Ms. Levy is having none of it, and she is not the only one. Even Erica Jong seems to feel that something has gone wrong. Known for popularizing the idea that a woman may want consequence-free sex, Ms. Jong today declares: “Being able to have an orgasm with a man you don’t love . . . that is not liberation.” It isn’t? Someone should tell this to Annie, a blue-eyed 29-year-old who admits to Ms. Levy that she “used to get so hurt” after a night of sex that didn’t yield an emotional bond. Now she has gotten over it, or tried to: “I’m like a guy,” she brags.

How did this happen? Why did feminism sell its soul to the sexual-liberation movement in the first place? After all, the original feminists were fighting to be taken seriously. Hugh Hefner, by contrast, said that his ideal girl “resembles a bunny . . . vivacious, jumping–sexy.” There seems to be a contradiction here.

Ms. Levy’s answer is that, after a brief and failed fight against pornography, feminism joined forces with Hef & Co. to fight for abortion rights. This is a plausible explanation, as far as it goes. Abortion has indeed assumed a primary importance in both feminist “rights” thinking and in the whole culture of soft-core libertinism: Mr. Hefner is a big fan of abortion, for obvious reasons.

But something else may be going on. Feminism grounded itself, in its early days, in the idea that there were no differences between the sexes. A girl wanting to keep her virginity was bad, for sexual reticence amounted to asserting a separate standard, a Victorian one at that. To Hef, modesty was a “hang-up,” and to the feminists it was a “patriarchal construct.” Ms. Levy believes that feminism was on the right track but then veered off-course: “What has moved into feminism’s place . . . is an almost opposite style, attitude, and set of principles.”

But maybe feminism’s foundations were weak from the start. Everyone in Ms. Levy’s book–whether it’s middle-class girls who feel anxiety about appearing “hot” or grown women who confess to Ms. Levy that “accumulating sex for its own sake . . . is not that sexual”–shows that a woman’s experience of sex and love is very different from that of an adolescent boy or a man. Indeed, the more a woman imitates a man, the clearer these differences become.

Paris Hilton tells Rolling Stone: “My boyfriends always tell me I’m not sexual. Sexy, but not sexual.” (Ms. Levy reports that on one of the infamous videotapes she takes a cellphone call during intercourse.) Plainly, the sexual revolution has not brought fulfillment for women. Even its mascots experience boredom, and for the civilians there is distress and heartache.

It may be that, like Ms. Levy, a lot of feminists now regret getting in bed with Mr. Hefner. Yet if you mention the word “modesty” within 20 feet of them their heads spin around like Linda Blair in “The Exorcist.” This is where they get stuck. Only if feminism can embrace the more traditional ways that men and women have courted throughout the ages can it have anything practical to offer young women. To the extent that feminists dismiss as worthless anything that is perceived as “backtracking,” they only help to perpetuate the “raunch culture”–even as they deplore its effects.

Take a beach scene that Ms. Levy recounts, when the male “friends” of two girls pressure them to take off their suits. Soon surrounded by a circle of 40 screaming men, the girls say “no way!” but eventually give in and spank each other to appease the crowd.

Such a girl requires, in addition to perhaps Mace, a compelling alternative to the Female Chauvinist Pig. Otherwise she may well give in to social pressure–not to mention professorial nonsense–and then wonder what’s wrong with her when she is not happy with the pig in her bed or the pig she has become.

Ms. Shalit is author of “A Return to Modesty: Discovering the Lost Virtue.” You can buy “Female Chauvinist Pigs” from the OpinionJournal bookstore.

September 20, 2005

Many Women at Elite Colleges Set Career Path to Motherhood http://www.nytimes.com/2005/09/20/national/20women.html?ex=1127966400&en=3f7348e314a603ee&ei=5070&emc=eta1

By LOUISE STORY

Cynthia Liu is precisely the kind of high achiever Yale wants: smart (1510 SAT), disciplined (4.0 grade point average), competitive (finalist in Texas oratory competition), musical (pianist), athletic (runner) and altruistic (hospital volunteer). And at the start of her sophomore year at Yale, Ms. Liu is full of ambition, planning to go to law school.

So will she join the long tradition of famous Ivy League graduates? Not likely. By the time she is 30, this accomplished 19-year-old expects to be a stay-at-home mom.

“My mother’s always told me you can’t be the best career woman and the best mother at the same time,” Ms. Liu said matter-of-factly. “You always have to choose one over the other.”

At Yale and other top colleges, women are being groomed to take their place in an ever more diverse professional elite. It is almost taken for granted that, just as they make up half the students at these institutions, they will move into leadership roles on an equal basis with their male classmates.

There is just one problem with this scenario: many of these women say that is not what they want.

Many women at the nation’s most elite colleges say they have already decided that they will put aside their careers in favor of raising children. Though some of these students are not planning to have children and some hope to have a family and work full time, many others, like Ms. Liu, say they will happily play a traditional female role, with motherhood their main commitment.

Much attention has been focused on career women who leave the work force to rear children. What seems to be changing is that while many women in college two or three decades ago expected to have full-time careers, their daughters, while still in college, say they have already decided to suspend or end their careers when they have children.

“At the height of the women’s movement and shortly thereafter, women were much more firm in their expectation that they could somehow combine full-time work with child rearing,” said Cynthia E. Russett, a professor of American history who has taught at Yale since 1967. “The women today are, in effect, turning realistic.”

Dr. Russett is among more than a dozen faculty members and administrators at the most exclusive institutions who have been on campus for decades and who said in interviews that they had noticed the changing attitude.

Many students say staying home is not a shocking idea among their friends. Shannon Flynn, an 18-year-old from Guilford, Conn., who is a freshman at Harvard, says many of her girlfriends do not want to work full time.

“Most probably do feel like me, maybe even tending toward wanting to not work at all,” said Ms. Flynn, who plans to work part time after having children, though she is torn because she has worked so hard in school.

“Men really aren’t put in that position,” she said.

Uzezi Abugo, a freshman at the University of Pennsylvania who hopes to become a lawyer, says she, too, wants to be home with her children at least until they are in school.

“I’ve seen the difference between kids who did have their mother stay at home and kids who didn’t, and it’s kind of like an obvious difference when you look at it,” said Ms. Abugo, whose mother, a nurse, stayed home until Ms. Abugo was in first grade.

While the changing attitudes are difficult to quantify, the shift emerges repeatedly in interviews with Ivy League students, including 138 freshman and senior females at Yale who replied to e-mail questions sent to members of two residential colleges over the last school year.

The interviews found that 85 of the students, or roughly 60 percent, said that when they had children, they planned to cut back on work or stop working entirely. About half of those women said they planned to work part time, and about half wanted to stop work for at least a few years.

Two of the women interviewed said they expected their husbands to stay home with the children while they pursued their careers. Two others said either they or their husbands would stay home, depending on whose career was furthest along.

The women said that pursuing a rigorous college education was worth the time and money because it would help position them to work in meaningful part-time jobs when their children are young or to attain good jobs when their children leave home.

In recent years, elite colleges have emphasized the important roles they expect their alumni – both men and women – to play in society.

For example, earlier this month, Shirley M. Tilghman, the president of Princeton University, welcomed new freshmen, saying: “The goal of a Princeton education is to prepare young men and women to take up positions of leadership in the 21st century. Of course, the word ‘leadership’ conjures up images of presidents and C.E.O.’s, but I want to stress that my idea of a leader is much broader than that.”

She listed education, medicine and engineering as other areas where students could become leaders.

In an e-mail response to a question, Dr. Tilghman added: “There is nothing inconsistent with being a leader and a stay-at-home parent. Some women (and a handful of men) whom I have known who have done this have had a powerful impact on their communities.”

Yet the likelihood that so many young women plan to opt out of high-powered careers presents a conundrum.

“It really does raise this question for all of us and for the country: when we work so hard to open academics and other opportunities for women, what kind of return do we expect to get for that?” said Marlyn McGrath Lewis, director of undergraduate admissions at Harvard, who served as dean for coeducation in the late 1970′s and early 1980′s.

It is a complicated issue and one that most schools have not addressed. The women they are counting on to lead society are likely to marry men who will make enough money to give them a real choice about whether to be full-time mothers, unlike those women who must work out of economic necessity.

It is less than clear what universities should, or could, do about it. For one, a person’s expectations at age 18 are less than perfect predictors of their life choices 10 years later. And in any case, admissions officers are not likely to ask applicants whether they plan to become stay-at-home moms.

University officials said that success meant different things to different people and that universities were trying to broaden students’ minds, not simply prepare them for jobs.

“What does concern me,” said Peter Salovey, the dean of Yale College, “is that so few students seem to be able to think outside the box; so few students seem to be able to imagine a life for themselves that isn’t constructed along traditional gender roles.”

There is, of course, nothing new about women being more likely than men to stay home to rear children.

According to a 2000 survey of Yale alumni from the classes of 1979, 1984, 1989 and 1994, conducted by the Yale Office of Institutional Research, more men from each of those classes than women said that work was their primary activity – a gap that was small among alumni in their 20′s but widened as women moved into their prime child-rearing years. Among the alumni surveyed who had reached their 40′s, only 56 percent of the women still worked, compared with 90 percent of the men.

A 2005 study of comparable Yale alumni classes found that the pattern had not changed. Among the alumni who had reached their early 40′s, just over half said work was their primary activity, compared with 90 percent of the men. Among the women who had reached their late 40′s, some said they had returned to work, but the percentage of women working was still far behind the percentage of men.

A 2001 survey of Harvard Business School graduates found that 31 percent of the women from the classes of 1981, 1985 and 1991 who answered the survey worked only part time or on contract, and another 31 percent did not work at all, levels strikingly similar to the percentages of the Yale students interviewed who predicted they would stay at home or work part time in their 30′s and 40′s.

What seems new is that while many of their mothers expected to have hard-charging careers, then scaled back their professional plans only after having children, the women of this generation expect their careers to take second place to child rearing.

“It never occurred to me,” Rebecca W. Bushnell, dean of the School of Arts and Sciences at the University of Pennsylvania, said about working versus raising children. “Thirty years ago when I was heading out, I guess I was just taking it one step at a time.”

Dr. Bushnell said young women today, in contrast, are thinking and talking about part-time or flexible work options for when they have children. “People have a heightened awareness of trying to get the right balance between work and family.”

Sarah Currie, a senior at Harvard, said many of the men in her American Family class last fall approved of women’s plans to stay home with their children.

“A lot of the guys were like, ‘I think that’s really great,’ ” Ms. Currie said. “One of the guys was like, ‘I think that’s sexy.’ Staying at home with your children isn’t as polarizing of an issue as I envision it is for women who are in their 30′s now.”

For most of the young women who responded to e-mail questions, a major factor shaping their attitudes seemed to be their experience with their own mothers, about three out of five of whom did not work at all, took several years off or worked only part time.

“My stepmom’s very proud of my choice because it makes her feel more valuable,” said Kellie Zesch, a Texan who graduated from the University of North Carolina two years ago and who said that once she had children, she intended to stay home for at least five years and then consider working part time. “It justified it to her, that I don’t look down on her for not having a career.”

Similarly, students who are committed to full-time careers, without breaks, also cited their mothers as influences. Laura Sullivan, a sophomore at Yale who wants to be a lawyer, called her mother’s choice to work full time the “greatest gift.”

“She showed me what it meant to be an amazing mother and maintain a career,” Ms. Sullivan said.

Some of these women’s mothers, who said they did not think about these issues so early in their lives, said they were surprised to hear that their college-age daughters had already formed their plans.

Emily Lechner, one of Ms. Liu’s roommates, hopes to stay home a few years, then work part time as a lawyer once her children are in school.

Her mother, Carol, who once thought she would have a full-time career but gave it up when her children were born, was pleasantly surprised to hear that. “I do have this bias that the parents can do it best,” she said. “I see a lot of women in their 30′s who have full-time nannies, and I just question if their kids are getting the best.”

For many feminists, it may come as a shock to hear how unbothered many young women at the nation’s top schools are by the strictures of traditional roles.

“They are still thinking of this as a private issue; they’re accepting it,” said Laura Wexler, a professor of American studies and women’s and gender studies at Yale. “Women have been given full-time working career opportunities and encouragement with no social changes to support it.

“I really believed 25 years ago,” Dr. Wexler added, “that this would be solved by now.”

Angie Ku, another of Ms. Liu’s roommates who had a stay-at-home mom, talks nonchalantly about attending law or business school, having perhaps a 10-year career and then staying home with her children.

“Parents have such an influence on their children,” Ms. Ku said. “I want to have that influence. Me!”

She said she did not mind if that limited her career potential.

“I’ll have a career until I have two kids,” she said. “It doesn’t necessarily matter how far you get. It’s kind of like the experience: I have tried what I wanted to do.”

Ms. Ku added that she did not think it was a problem that women usually do most of the work raising kids.

“I accept things how they are,” she said. “I don’t mind the status quo. I don’t see why I have to go against it.”

After all, she added, those roles got her where she is.

“It worked so well for me,” she said, “and I don’t see in my life why it wouldn’t work.”

Thanks to Carrie for sending me this article.

My dear friend commented on this part of the article, “And when it comes right down to it, who would have any of the right stuff to even have faith in marriage, the family, and children after indulging in such self-destructive, self-loathing chaos?”

Her response was, “….Therein lies the pitfall…. Once you start tasting of that forbidden apple, the garden of romance can all too easily dissapear! This, i think, is why many parents of our generation divorced — lack of faith in love is a direct result of the “free love” movement. Someone needs to warn the young!!! They need to be made aware of the booby-traps. Otherwise we are all just walking around with broken flowers, feeling numb to the pain we don’t even realize we are entitled to have.”

Since married is the new separated, separated is the new divorced, and divorced is the new single, that married guy is pretty much available anyway based on simple associative logic.

Oh, and now, divorced is the new widowed!

‘In the past, widowers used to get dates based on a “poor baby” sympathy a divorced man would never receive — until now.

Now, women are overlooking his part in it because then the divorce might make the divorced man undateable and that just wouldn’t do.

Blame the victim, the wife, for not understanding him the way you do.

So, divorced is the new widowed.’

I love this picture of Dr. Sadie Allison, Pleasure Doctor. Dr. Sadie is a lot of fun to ogle. Dr. Sadie will be beautiful, inspirational, educational, and live this Sunday on Talk Sex with Sue Johanson on the Oxygen at 11PM Eastern.

Here is the love note I received from the sexy, beautiful, brilliant, and charming Dr. Sadie just now:

SUBJECT: O Baby! See Your Doctor On TV
FROM: Dr. Sadie Allison, Tickle Kitty

Hi Again Tickle Fan!

How can you revive the heights of passion—without waking the baby?

Come find out this Sunday evening when your Pleasure Doctor appears LIVE on “Talk Sex with Sue Johanson” at 11E/10C/9P on the Oxygen Network

The topic? “The Baby Came—Now It’s YOUR Turn!??? Get my advice on sex after the baby and see the toys, techniques and turn-ons guaranteed to reenergize your lovelife.

Or come right now to Tickle Kitty and get those toys at 15% off with FREE lube and your own Tickle Kitty Magnet, too! At checkout, use coupon code: “AfterTheBaby15???

Set your TiVo now, or tune in Sunday, Dec. 3rd. See you there!

- Dr. Sadie Allison
Your Pleasure Doctor
http://www.ticklekitty.com

P.S. Forward this email now to all your friends with new babies so they can discover (and save!) too.

A couple months ago I received an email in response the resume I posted on Craig’s List from Dr. Sadie Allison, America’s Pleasure Coach, proprietor of TickleKitty and the Tickle Kitty store.

David and I met Sadie for drinks at the Beach Chalet while I was in San Francisco on business. The three of us talked for a couple hours. Sadie has penned three sex-help books, Tickle Your Fancy, Toygasms!, and Tickle His Pickle. Before we left, we received all three books, and an assortment of strawberry and au naturel Slippery Kitty.

Sadie was super cool. Dr. Sadie sent me home with lots of books and lots of lube. In fact, on the night of the big Grotto halloween party the following weekend, Oliver, Emily, and I handed out the assortment of strawberry lube and plain lube as well as the books in lieu of candy, which I failed to buy. Emily is so cute she makes me cry so it was less creepy for her to hand out these things to all the pretty people who attended the party. It was a serious hit.

Meet Dr. Sadie Allison, America’s Pleasure Coach

People have personal coaches for sports, careers, fitness, finances—even makeovers. Now a new coach is being welcomed into America’s homes to show women, men and couples how to enjoy more fulfilling, passionate sex. Meet America’s Pleasure Coach, Dr. Sadie Allison.

“There’s still so much that people want to learn about sexual pleasure, but don’t know where to turn,” says author Sadie Allison. “They find when they reach for my how-to sex help books, more than just the light bulb turns on!”

Dr. Sadie’s secret? “Pleasure techniques presented in a fun, inviting way,” she says about her line of bestselling books. “I then tastefully illustrate all the techniques so people want to race home to try them.”

With over 500,000 copies in print, all of Dr. Sadie’s books, Tickle Your Fancy, Toygasms!, and Tickle His Pickle instantly zoomed up the charts and became national bestsellers, each receiving the prestigious Independent Publishers Best Sexuality Book Award. Dr. Sadie also created a line of FDA-approved pleasure lubricants, Slippery Kitty, and a popular line of sensual toys called Dr. Sadie’s Pleasure Kits, to suit every passion, occasion and experience level.

Dr. Sadie educates millions as a repeat guest on numerous TV and radio programs including E! Entertainment TV, Oxygen TV’s Talk Sex with Sue Johanson, Discovery Health Channel’s Berman & Berman, Playboy TV’s Sexcetera, Showtime’s Family Business, Dr. Drew and Adam Carolla’s Loveline, Howard Stern and more. She’s also a regularly quoted sex authority in national magazines such as Cosmopolitan, Redbook, Glamour, AVN, and Publishers Weekly, and is a sought-after speaker.

Dr. Sadie Allison is a graduate of San Diego State University with a B.A. in French and Marketing, and completed her Doctorate in Human Sexuality from San Francisco’s Institute for Advanced Study of Human Sexuality. She’s a certified sexologist and member of the American Association of Sex Educators, Counselors & Therapists (AASECT). As founder and Kitty-In-Chief of Tickle Kitty, Inc., Dr. Sadie also runs a thriving publishing company and internet business (www.ticklekitty.com). She was born, raised, and still lives in the city by the bay, and spends her days writing, jogging across the Golden Gate Bridge and hosting dinner parties with friends.

Woman Turns Touchy Subject Into Touching Success Story

For Sadie Allison, it all began back in high school with a shy whisper from a curious girlfriend.

“How do I do it?”

The intensely personal question was about masturbating, a mystery no one had ever helped her solve. Ms. Allison, ever-comfortable with her own body, caringly answered her friend’s question. Then another. And another. News of her confidential advice-giving spread quickly, and she soon became known as the campus “Dr. Ruth”—a nickname that stuck through college. But Ms. Allison had questions of her own. Why was there so much confusion? Was there no trusted source her friends could turn to for advice on sexual pleasure?

After earning her B.A. in French, Ms. Allison moved on to a fast-paced sales career in high-tech, but never stopped thinking about the need for quality advice and information about sex. A passionate entrepreneur at heart, she decided to redirect her career to publish sex-help books. How could she have known that her first book, Tickle Your Fancy—A Woman’s Guide To Sexual Self-Pleasure would allow her to trade her life in Silicon Valley for a career in silicone toys?

Bypassing the big New York publishers, Ms Allison started Tickle Kitty in her tiny San Francisco apartment. “At first, it was just me, my dwindling savings, no publishing know-how, and a steady chorus of nay-sayers,” admits Ms. Allison. “But my goal was to reach out to enhance people’s sex lives—and it worked.”

In just a few years, Tickle Kitty catapulted to success: three bestsellers, a website filled with scores of upscale sex toys, publishing awards, original lines of pleasure kits and lubricants, as well as speaking engagements and TV appearances for the Kitty-In-Chief. “And a move out of that tiny apartment,” she adds proudly.

What’s next? “Everyone deserves more pleasure, and I’m happy to provide it,” says Ms. Allison, who always has new sex-help books in development. “I guess I’ll never be satisfied till everyone else is satisfied!”

Tickle Kitty’s Entire Mission Told In Just Three Words

How many CEOs can pack the full power of their corporate mission into three irresistible words?

For Sadie Allison, it’s easy: More Powerful Orgasms.

This arousing human desire is what makes her company Tickle Kitty purr. “We’re here to inspire positive change in peoples’ lives,” observes Ms. Allison, Tickle Kitty’s Kitty-In-Chief. “We clear out old inhibitions by providing the accurate information they need for more frequent, more intimate, more uninhibited sexual pleasure.”

Discovering the key to greater erotic passion begins not with vibrating toys, but with vibrant knowledge. That’s Tickle Kitty’s specialty. “We create the how-to sex guides you wish you’d read sooner in life,” notes Ms. Allison, author of bestsellers Tickle Your Fancy, Toygasms!, and her latest gem, Tickle His Pickle. “These books are fun, informative and honest, so you can be inspired to explore all the sexual pleasure and fulfillment you have coming to you.”

Her tastefully illustrated books also serve to whet erotic appetites, inspiring people to seek out new pleasure toys and foreplay games they never knew existed. “Guess what?” exclaims Ms. Allison. “We offer those, too!” Tickle Kitty also serves up its own line of Slippery Kitty FDA-approved lubricants called Slippery Kitty, as well as a branded toy collection for grownups known as Sadie’s Pleasure Kits.

“When you relate to a person’s wants and desires with understanding, respect, thorough information, and just the right touch of humor, they get excited, inspired, and most of all, impassioned,” she says. “Finding or reviving your sexuality is the most glorious and natural way to feel better about yourself and your life.”

In Does domesticity conflict with feminism?, Diane wants to know if being “Martha Stewart-esque” is inconsistent with being “Doctorly.” I say no.

I say that in a world of too much testosterone, estrogen can and should be a competitive advantage.

The problem here is in the language.

“Womanly,” “girly,” “feminine,” and “female,” need to stop being synonymous with weak and pathetic. They’re not.

Women are strong.

Ask a surgeon who winces more, a woman or a man, and the answer is sure to be a man. Besides, women have to deal with two things that most men never have to deal with: childbirth and whiney husbands.

Two-piece garments worn by women for athletic purposes have been observed on Greek urns and paintings, dated as early as 1400 BC.

Modern origin of the Bikini

According to the official version, the modern bikini was invented by French engineer Louis Reard and fashion designer Jacques Heim in Paris in 1946 (introduced on July 5), and named after Bikini Atoll, the site of nuclear weapon tests in the Marshall Islands, on the reasoning that the burst of excitement it would cause would be like the atomic bomb. However it should be noted that women in Paris were wearing bikinis one year before the bikini was “invented.” This fact is documented with pictures in the July 16, 1945 issue of Life Magazine.

Of course the magazine article did not attach the name “bikini” to the swimsuit. At that time the public had not yet been informed of the atom bomb project, and few people had ever heard of Bikini Atoll. The article instead spoke of the “French Bathing Suits.” But although the name had not yet been adopted, the swimsuits that the Parisian women were wearing are clearly recognizable as bikinis in style and coverage.

Coincidentally, the date of publication of the magazine, July 16, 1945, was the very same day that the first atomic bomb was detonated in the desert outside Alamogordo, New Mexico.

Reard’s suit was a refinement of the work of Jacques Heim who, two months earlier, had introduced the “Atome” (named for its size) and advertised it as the world’s “smallest bathing suit”. Reard split the “atome” even smaller, but could not find a model who would dare to wear his design. He ended up hiring Micheline Bernardini, a nude dancer from the Casino de Paris, as his model.

Bikinis in modern culture

It took fifteen years for the bikini to be accepted in the United States. In 1951 bikinis were banned from the Miss World Contest. In 1957, however, Brigitte Bardot’s bikini in And God Created Woman created a market for the swimwear in the US, and in 1960, Brian Hyland’s pop song “Itsy Bitsy Teenie Weenie Yellow Polka Dot Bikini” inspired a bikini-buying spree. Finally the bikini caught on, and by 1963, the movie Beach Party, starring Annette Funicello (emphatically not in a bikini, by mentor Walt Disney’s personal request) and Frankie Avalon, led a wave of films that made the bikini a pop-culture symbol.

In Malta bikinis took time to be introduced. In the 1960s the police fended off Bishop Michael Gonzi’s request to ban bikini clad tourists following fear of compromising Malta as a tourist destination. Malta Labour Party girls felt protected to put on bikinis during beach parties but this was unacceptable by those supporting the Nationalist Party.

People who are familiar with the history of Bikini Atoll—particularly opponents of nuclear proliferation—may find the etymology and use of the word “bikini” for a garment as inappropriate, as its tongue-in-cheek “explosive” reputation effectively reduces the significance of a serious historic humanitarian crisis—one that still influences the politics of the Marshall Islands—to a mere popular culture sex symbol in the minds of most people. The term two-piece is considered a neutral alternative.

The string bikini is one of the first and most classic renovations of the traditional bikini. It generally consists of the barest minimal fabric coverage for the top and bottoms. For some women, the string bikini may actually be the most flattering bikini style. The string bikini style looks best on women with small busts or boy shapes. Because women with small breasts do not need a large amount of bra-style support, a traditional triangle top can serve to add more shape and curve to the breasts. In addition, triangle tops with built-in under wires can work similarly to a push-up bra to maximize the breasts.

The bikini is a sex symbol that often makes the woman wearing it significantly more attractive in the eyes of men. Girls often wear a bikini to impress men or to fit in with the other women in bikinis. Many magazines market themselves by placing a woman in a bikini on the cover. Men often just buy the magazine for the picture of the woman and women may buy it to learn how to look like the woman on the cover. Because of the influence of the media, women try to lose weight before the summer so they can have the ideal “bikini body.” These weight loss goals are often unrealistic and unhealthy in their means and result. The image of the bikini in the media sometimes brings about eating disorders in people striving to have the “perfect” body. Though in reality, most women do not achieve their weight loss goals, but still wear bikinis anyway. That’s why there are different styles of bikinis, in different sizes and in different colors to suit every woman’s body type

Evolution of the bikini

A woman wearing a string bikini.In recent years, the term monokini has come into use for topless bathing by women: where the bikini has two parts, the monokini is the lower part. Where monokinis are in use, the word bikini may jokingly refer to a two-piece outfit consisting of a monokini and a sun hat. The term was coined by Rudi Gernreich.

The tankini is a swimsuit combining a tank top and a bikini bottom. A string bikini is a more revealing alternative style where both top and bottom are reduced to triangles of cloth connected by strings.

The lower part of the bikini was further reduced in size in the 1970s to the Brazilian thong, where the back of the suit is so thin that it disappears into the buttocks.

Female athletes who play beach volleyball professionally are required to wear two-pieces.

Media depiction of the Bikini

Women tanning often wear bikinis.The obvious sex appeal of the apparel prompted numerous film and television productions as soon as public morals changed to accept it. They include the numerous surf movies of the early 1960s and the television series, Baywatch. Iconic portrayals of bikinis in movies include Ursula Andress as Bond girl Honey Ryder in Dr. No (1962), Raquel Welch as the prehistoric cavegirl in the 1966 film One Million Years B.C., and Phoebe Cates in the 1982 teen film Fast Times at Ridgemont High. These scenes were recently ranked 1, 86, and 84 in Channel 4 (UK)’s 100 Greatest Sexy Moments (in film).

In addition, a variant of the bikini popular in fantasy literature is a bikini that is made up of metal to serve as (admittedly rather impractical) armor, sometimes referred to as a “chainmail bikini” or “brass bikini”; the character Red Sonja is a famous example. A term for such usage, where sex appeal is more important than actual practicality, is babes-at-arms (parodying “men-at-arms” for fully armoured soldiers).

Brigitte Bardot From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Brigitte Bardot (born September 28, 1934) is a French actress and model, considered the embodiment of the 1950s “sex kitten.”

In the 1970s Bardot established herself as an animal rights activist. During the 1990s she was outspoken about her political views on such issues as immigration, Islam in France, race mixing, and homosexuality.

Career

Bardot was born in Paris to Anne-Marie Mucel and Charles “Pilou” Bardot, an industrialist.

In 1952, she appeared on screen for the first time in Le Trou Normand. That same year, at age 18, she married director Roger Vadim, with whom she had been romantically involved for several years.

Although the European film industry was then in the ascendant, her personal rise was remarkable: she has been one of the few European actresses to receive mass media attention in the United States. She and Marilyn Monroe were the icons of female sexuality in the 1950s and 1960s and whenever she made public appearances in the United States the media hordes covered her every move.

Her films of the early and mid 1950s were lightweight romantic dramas, some of them historical, in which she was cast as ingénue or siren, often with an element of undress. She played bit parts in three English-language films, the British comedy Doctor at Sea (1955), Helen of Troy (1954), in which she was understudy for the title-role but only appears as Helen’s handmaid, and Act of Love (1954) with Kirk Douglas. Her French-language films were dubbed for international release. “She is every man’s idea of the girl he’d like to meet in Paris” said the film-critic Ivon Addams in 1955.

Vadim was not content with this light fare. The New Wave of French and Italian art directors and their stars were riding high internationally and he felt Bardot was being undersold. Looking for something more like an art-film to push her as a serious actress, he showcased her in And God Created Woman (1956) with Jean-Louis Trintignant.

The film, about an amoral teenager in a respectable small-town setting, was a big international success. She may have had an affair with her co-star Trintignant, but this was more likely a pre-release publicity gimmick. The film is often wrongly described as her first film (it was her seventeenth) and to have launched her overnight, but it did help move her towards the cinematic mainstream.

It also ruled out a transition to Hollywood, where she was thought too risqué to handle. The Doris Day era was in still in full swing and even Jane Russell in The French Line (1953) had been thought to be going too far by showing her midriff. Erotica like Bardot’s Cette sacrée gamine (That Crazy Kid, 1955) was considered fine at the box-office as long as it was clearly labelled “European”. Bardot’s limited English and strong accent, while beguiling to the ears of men, did not suit rapid-fire Hollywood scripts. In any event, staying in Europe benefited her image when the 1960s began to swing and Hollywood slipped into the background for a while, and Bardot was voted honorary sex-goddess of the decade.

Divorced from Vadim in 1957, she married actor Jacques Charrier (1959-62), by whom in 1960 she had her only child, Nicolas-Jacques Charrier from whom she is estranged. She once referred to her only child as “a tumour”. The marriage was preyed on by the paparazzi and there were clashes over the direction of Bardot’s career. Her films became more substantial, but this brought a heavy pressure of dual celebrity as she sought critical acclaim while remaining to most of the world a glamour model.

Poster for Bardot’s film Le Mépris (Contempt).Vie privée (1960), directed by Louis Malle has more than an element of autobiography in it. The scene in which, returning to her flat, Bardot’s character is harangued in the lift by a middle-aged cleaning-lady calling her a tramp and a tart was based on an actual incident, and is a resonant image of celebrity in the mid-20th century.

Soon after, Bardot withdrew to the seclusion of Southern France and is now known to have attempted suicide, but as the sexual revolution of the early 1960s gathered momentum her lifestyle began to seem more like the norm and the pressure lifted. Through the sixties, she was happy to appear in glossy star-vehicles like Viva Maria (1969), to dabble in pop music and to play the role of glamour model and icon. In 1965 she appeared as herself in the Hollywood production Dear Brigitte starring Jimmy Stewart.

Her other husbands were German millionaire playboy Gunter Sachs (1966-69), and French right-wing politician, Bernard d’Ormale (1992-present). She has also had reputed relationships with many men including singers Serge Gainsbourg and Sacha Distel. In the late 1950s, she shared an exchange she considered “croiser de deux sillages??? with writer John Gilmore, then an actor in France for a New Wave film to have starred Jean Seberg. Gilmore told Paris Match, “I felt a beautiful warmth with Bardot but found it difficult to discuss things to any depth whatsoever???.

She is recognised for popularising bikini swimwear in early films such as Manina (Woman without a Veil, 1952) and in her appearances at Cannes and in many photo shoots. She even sported an early version of the monokini from time to time. Though this was not considered extraordinary in France, it was considered nearly scandalous in the US. The fashions of the 1960s looked effortlessly right and spontaneous on her and she joined Marilyn Monroe and Jackie Kennedy, in becoming a subject for Andy Warhol paintings.

In 1970, the sculptor Alain Gourdon used Bardot as the model for a bust of Marianne, the French national emblem.

Activism and controversy

In 1974, just before her fortieth birthday, Bardot announced her retirement. After appearing in more than fifty motion pictures, and recording several music albums, most notably with Serge Gainsbourg, she chose to use her fame to promote animal rights. She is accused of being a misanthrope and preferring the company of animals to that of humans.

In 1986, she established the Brigitte Bardot Foundation for the Welfare and Protection of Animals. She raised three million French francs to fund the foundation by auctioning off jewelry and many personal belongings. Today, she is one of the world’s most influential animal rights activists and a major opponent of the consumption of horse meat.

She is also one of the most celebrated supporters of Jean-Marie Le Pen, the leader of the right-wing Front National political party, with which her husband is associated. With the publication of her 2003 book, A Scream in the Silence, the reclusive Bardot has come under considerable fire for anti-Muslim, and anti-gay comments. In May 2003, The MRAP (“Mouvement contre le Racisme et pour l’Amitié entre les Peuples” – Movement against racism and for friendship between peoples) announced that it would sue Bardot for her published views. Another organisation, The “Ligue des Droits de l’Homme” (League of Human Rights), announced that it was considering similar legal proceedings.

Bardot, in a letter to a French gay magazine, wrote in her defense, “Apart from my husband—who maybe will cross over one day as well—I am entirely surrounded by homos. For years they have been my support, my friends, my adopted children, my confidants”.

Bardot has lost a considerable amount of sympathy from her fans due to her now-frequent anti-Muslim, anti-gay and anti-immigrant comments. On June 10, 2004 Bardot was convicted by a French court of “inciting racial hatred” and fined 5,000 €, which was the fourth such conviction/fine she has faced from French courts[1]. The courts cited passages where Bardot referred to the “Islamization of France” and the “underground and dangerous infiltration of Islam”[2], her descriptions of France’s Muslim community, the largest in Europe. In the book she also referred to homosexuals as “fairground freaks” and she condemns the presence of women in government.

Considered a militant for animal protection, she condemned seal hunting in Canada during a visit to that country. She sought to discuss the issue with Stephen Harper, though her request for a meeting was denied.

Although I do agree with Diane that pre-feminist “women owe so much of their freedom to Electrolux” I actually think that modern, successful, post-feminist, working parents owe so much of their freedom to the poorer women who are willing to take care of their families, raise their children, and keep their home, at the expense of their own families, children, and homes.

Diane’s article, Linda Hirshman needs a spoonful of sugar to help the medicine go down, reminded me of the article I read on the 9th, Is this really feminism? I believe that feminism is the empowerment of women in a patriarchal system with the goal of achieving a quality of choice at least equal to that of men.

A woman’s choices should include whatever she wants, including the guilt-free choice to become a mom and stay at home with her children; or, alternately, become partner, dean, president, or laureate.

If it is indeed her choice (and not the result of coercion) a woman should not feel shame (or be made to feel ashamed) for making any choice. This choice should not be multiple choice: doctor, lawyer, scholar, politician, or writer. This freedom of choice, this choice feminism, need to allow, without judgement, “dropping out” to become a “full-time mother.”

I don’t know is this bodes well with Linda Hirshman in either Homeward Bound or her new book, Get to Work : A Manifesto for Women of the World:

“What do you need to live a good life in the real world? Among other things, a real job-and changing diapers isn’t one. “Opting out” is a trade-off that is almost guaranteed to blow up in your face, sooner or later. Linda Hirshman’s Get to Work-a clarion call for stay-at-home moms to blast out of the house-is a rocket-propelled grenade aimed directly at the mommy wars, and offers a bold plan for all women to find and be able to pay for the kinds of satisfying lives that a grown-up should want to lead.”

I studied feminist theory in college (Marxist-feminism, French feminism, Postmodern Feminism, Deconstructionism) and the objective was to dismantle the master’s house without the master’s tools. Yes, the goal was to reduce the master’s house to rubble, but what I fear has been built in its place looks much the same.

As far as I could tell, the original goal of feminism was to redefine a woman’s role in society from being a man’s possession (from daughter to wife) to being an equal to men. Feminism was about tearing off the patriarchal yoke. Unfortunately, if I am reading it right, Linda Hirshman believes that one yoke should be replaced by another: feminist expectations.

In other words, as a woman, If you have the potential to rule the world and usurp men, it is your responsibility above all else so to do. Until then, the struggle must continue unabated.

This isn’t about attaining choice, this is about attaining control.

One technique of control is manipulation and Linda Hirshman and her book, Get to Work, is using shame, judgement, and disappointment in order to make empowered, first-class, wealthy, affluent, elite, a-type, pedigreed women feel bad about themselves and their choices if their choices don’t include “living up to your full potential” as defined by becoming partner, dean, president, or laureate.

And that is not choice, that is obligation: exchanging one yoke for another; one societal expectation for another.

The Washington Post has a four-page article on the Wingman. Only one wingman? Amateurs! In high school and college, I was a member of wingteams. Via Wonkette, Gawker, and the Washington Post.

I had a wingteam in high school. We would go out in teams of three or five. Three to five guys together looks less desperate than two guys lurking.

Let’s say there are only two cute girls. The three guys move in and engage, making one another look funny and cool. One guy is predestined to disappear into the night after things gel. In a team of three or five, there is a simple system of “dibs” sometimes used, although most often the most senior, the most cool, or the most alpha come first while the newest, youngest, or lamest is predestined to break off.

Calling dibs is a serious business when men go out — very serious — and breaking dibs is a serious offense that may result in getting drummed out of the team, also known as “being excommunicated.” Dibs last as long as the the dibsholder likes. We men are never catty and rarely fight over women to say nothing of backstabbing or stealing someone elses dib (of course, it is open season outside of the team).

A single wingman? How pathetic. When I was in high school and college, going out was an orchestrated mission with strategy, with tactics, and with easily-definable goals with success and failure metrics and defined exit strategies.

Women didn’t have a chance.

“In the bitingly funny, razor-sharp I Love You, Nice to Meet You, platonic friends Kevin Bleyer (“The Daily Show with Jon Stewart???) and Lori Gottlieb give the no-holds-barred low-down on coupling up from the both the male and female points of view. Or as they like to put it, “Twice the perspective, half the insight??? (after all, what do they know – they’re still single).”

“Like romance anthropologists, Lori and Kevin deconstruct every key moment in the lifecycle of a relationship, from what the fake purse-grab really means when the check comes (how hard is it to find your wallet in a purse the size of doughnut?) to fighting etiquette (Is all fair when love is war?) to who gets “home couch advantage??? in couples therapy. Based on stories from their own dating experiences (funny for you, mortifying for them), I Love You, Nice to Meet You is a hilarious and eye-opening collection of “anecdates??? from a guy and a girl who just want to find the one but – lucky for you – haven’t.”

What People are Saying about I Love You, Nice to Meet You : A Guy and a Girl Give the Lowdown on Coupling Up

“The best new funny book about dating on planet Earth, perhaps in the entire universe, and certainly in the Milky Way. Even Tolstoy and God together couldn’t write something as funny and cool and weird and wonderful as this.”
—Molly Jong-Fast, author of Normal Girl and The Sex Doctors in the Basement

“I Love You, Nice to Meet You is funny, affecting, blunt and useful. Kevin and Lori are generous to old flames (well, most of them) and unsparing on themselves. This book may or may not help you find true happiness. But it will give you good, sound advice about what not to talk about over that first cup of coffee, or what items that are best not displayed in your medicine cabinet. Their alternating interpretations make us laugh at the gaffes we have all committed in hope of love. But they still hold out hope for love.”
—Scott Simon, host of NPR’s Weekend Edition Saturday

“For lonely urban singles, here–finally–is a warm, witty companion to crawl into bed at night with. The bad news is it’s a book. The good news is, “I Love You, Nice to Meet You” is very funny, only costs a low one-time fee, and won’t call you regularly at 1 a.m. ‘just to say hi’ (I forget in which chapter, but it’s covered). Shake up a cosmo for one and enjoy.”
—Sandra Tsing Loh, author of A Year in Van Nuys“The funniest book about dating to date. Gottlieb and Bleyer guide us through the twists and turning points in every relationship, providing insight, fresh perspectives, personal anecdotes and hearty laughs along the way. Read it in one big gulp, or savor slowly, bite by bite.”
—Valerie Frankel, author of Hex and the Single Girl and The Girlfriend Curse

“It’s amazing that this is a funny book because this is one exhaustingly detailed compendium of everything that could ever go wrong in every stage a love relationship. At long last, you, the book buying public, will never again have to actually participate in this barbaric uncivilized ritual to become the grizzled cynical veteran of bad love you were destined to be. For this we all owe Kevin Bleyer and Lori Gottlieb a debt of gratitude.”
—Merrill Markoe, original head writer of The Late Show with David Letterman and author of It’s My F—ing Birthday: A Novel.

“Sure, chivalry died. But it got replaced by something much funnier–and luckily Lori Gottlieb and Kevin Bleyer are here to describe it. In dueling essays, the authors spar, match wits, and reveal startling truths about contemporary relationships.Whether you’re searching for the soulmate you have yet to meet, or getting increasingly irritated at the one you found already, this book provides the antidote: pure laughter.”
—Jenny Lyn Bader, co-author He Meant, She Meant: The Definitive Male-Female Dictionary

Reviews of I Love You, Nice to Meet You : A Guy and a Girl Give the Lowdown on Coupling Up

“Knowing that bad dates make good stories, Gottlieb (Stick Figure: A Diary of My Former Self) and Bleyer, a writer for The Daily Show with Jon Stewart, share a collection of “anecdates” in this he-said she-said guide to “coupling up” that has not infrequent flashes of true hilarity—a rarity among the ever swelling ranks of humorous dating guides. The authors, good friends who have never been an item (“not now, not then”), provide individual interpretations on the standard fare of relationship topics, but cleverly; chapter titles include “Venue Ask Her Out – Is ‘location, location, location’ the key to getting a second date?” and “I’ll Show You Mine, If You Show Me How – Is there any civilized way to get naked with a new lover?” Insights such as “If you cry about anything less than the death of a mother…you’re doomed,” “Oprah is pornography for women” and “a week of uninterrupted physical presence isn’t a sign of love. It’s a stakeout,” make Gottlieb and Bleyer’s stiff shots of wisdom go down more like a fizzy summertime cocktail, helping to make the dating game, if not always fun, at least fun to read about.”
—Publishers Weekly

Who wrote this? “The only kind of money it seems that [men] have an aversion to is money that belongs to a woman.”

Maureen Dowd, right? Nope! Arianna Huffington!

Tell you the truth, Arianna and Maureen, the reason why men “would rather marry ‘their secretaries than their bosses’” is because her job is not in competition with his job, her time is not in competition with his time.

When I consider all of the “pros” associated with dating a brilliant, powerful, successful, pedirgreed, rich, creative, and workaholic woman — which are obvious — it all comes down to the “cons” which are her lack of availability, her lack of leisure, her lack of time to spend with me on my schedule, and her deep-down tendency to really rub my nose in the fact that I might just be less brilliant, powerful, successful, pedirgreed, rich, creative, and workaholic than she.

That is what it comes down to. To quote my own article called, Bitterness Your Name is Maureen Dowd, “At least in DC, 35 means we are ready to settle down and get married and start a family. To be honest, in our thirties, we are dating women in their twenties. Know why? No, not because they’re younger or more beautiful — that is rarely the case — but because women in their twenties are more hopeful, more romantic, more curious, and more impressed by the experiences, the successes, and the creature comforts we have. They think we’re cool, we’re exciting, and we’ve arrived. And although we don’t have control over who marries us, we do have absolute control over who we marry. And that’s just the way it is.”

Here is the full screed, which is almost exactly what Maureen Dowd has said:

For the Love of Money: On Men, Women, Fearlessness, and the Almighty Dollar

Men and their money were all over the news this week, including Exxon chair Lee Raymond’s $400 million dollar retirement package (that’s a hell of a gold watch!) and Dick Cheney’s $8.82 million adjusted gross income and $1.9 million IRS refund (to be fair, the Cheneys did donate over $6 million to charity, including $2.7 million to the Richard B. and Lynne V. Cheney Cardiovascular Institute at George Washington University Medical School — which, for a man with the Veep’s medical history, seems less like charity and more like insurance).

I’ve been thinking about the very special relationship men have with money a lot lately, as I’m working on the part of my book that deals with the incredibly different ways men and women deal with what the Ojays called “the mean, mean green” in their soul classic “For the Love of Money.”

For instance, men are genetically hardwired to love money. And it really doesn’t seem to matter how they get it. They love money they earn, they love money they inherit, they love money they steal, they love money they win at the racetrack or in Vegas, they love money they find on the street. The only kind of money it seems that they have an aversion to is money that belongs to a woman.

Sad but true. A study last year found that, as the New York Times put it, men would rather marry “their secretaries than their bosses.”

This is perplexing because men are supposed to be all about problem-solving and efficiency. If you love women and you love money, then wouldn’t a woman with money be a two-fer, like one of those phone/MP3 players? So why does money enhance the male ego in one instance but diminish it in another?

Maybe it’s because money usually is accompanied by power and confidence, which surprisingly few men are used to dealing with when it’s coming at them instead of from them.

Here are a few excerpts from my take on becoming fearless with money. Once again, please send me your stories of fear and fearlessness or of your journey from one to the other. And please let me know if I can use them in the book.

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Women, money and work — talk about a triangulated relationship. Money is, of course, inextricably tied up with work. It’s what we get in return for our labor, it’s how we pay our bills, it’s what we devote an enormous share of our lives to. And, yes, that’s all true for everybody. But for women there’s an added twist: how to earn what we’re worth in a world that’s content to pay us 76 cents to a man’s dollar.

Women MUST overcome their money worries because, as Galia Gichon, a financial advisor who owns the consulting company Down to Earth Finance, said at a financial seminar for women, “We’re making less, we’re working less, but we’re living longer… we’re going to need more money for retirement.”

Unfortunately, it’s not just a simple matter of asking for what you want. Men are conditioned from a young age to go after what they want. Not only are they rewarded by actually getting what they ask for, they’re also rewarded, in a larger sense, for even asking. Not so with women.

Women are made to feel guilty when they ask — or, God forbid, demand — what they feel they’re entitled to. As Gichon puts it, “We sort of let ourselves be told what we’re worth instead of just stating very directly and confidently what we feel we deserve.” Making demands is not considered “ladylike.” The problem is, waiting to be given what you deserve usually means you’ll never get what you deserve.

* * *
Money is, of course, about money. But it’s also often a stand-in for so many other fears. For both genders, money is symbolic of so much in our culture and our lives. But it’s also true that women have a very different relationship to money than men do.

Writer Carol Hoenig knows this well. Now a novelist and blogger, she told me that financial dependence was one of the things that kept her in an unhappy marriage. “Eighteen months after we were married, we began our family and I was a stay-at-home mom. Over the years, when I wanted more from my marriage, there was the consistent threat that if I wasn’t happy, I could move out. Because I did not work outside the home I had few options and he took comfort in that. It’s easy to keep someone under your control when you bring home the money.”

Eventually, she decided to pursue her own interests and went back to school — which changed everything. “I always enjoyed writing but never dared believe that I could make a living at it, until I took a number of college courses and was given encouragement by my professors. I then got a part-time job working in a bookstore that immediately promoted me to full-time. While my children were growing up, I was too. My writing and my career were empowering me. And finally, I acknowledged the fact that my husband was not invested in the marriage and he never would be. I was also becoming stronger as a person and realized that I would be happier on my own.”

I also saw a similar dynamic in my mother’s relationship to my father, although with her innate fearlessness, she did not let financial concerns stop her from leaving him when I was 11 years old. For my father, as for many Greek men of his generation, there was nothing wrong with extramarital affairs. “I don’t want you to interfere with my private life,” I remember him telling my mother when she complained. His marriage was part of his public life, his affairs part of his private life. But that was not okay for her, and even though she had no job and no obvious way to earn money she took her two children and left and trusted that somehow she would make ends meet. And somehow she did.

* * *
But fearlessness about money isn’t just about having money. Which is to say, having a lot of money doesn’t necessarily mean you’ve conquered your fears surrounding money. Poverty consciousness is the fear that no matter how much wealth you have, it’s never enough. Some of the richest women I know are still driven by a fear of ending up as bag ladies.

Ariel Capital Management President Mellody Hobson is a remarkable success story: At 37, she’s one of the wealthiest and most influential African-American women in the country. “I’ll always be thankful for what I’ve been given,” she told me. But a tumultuous, financially unstable home life as a child instilled in her a fear of being penniless, a fear that’s been both a positive motivation and a source of constant anxiety.

But even now, she wonders, “What if I screw up and lose everything? What is the amount of money that would make me comfortable? And my number is always much higher than my friends!” When she could, she’d even pay her phone bill and mortgage for an entire year. “So if everything goes wrong, I’d at least have a phone and a place to live!”

* * *
My mother taught my sister and me all about abundance — that it has to do more with your state of mind than your actual bank balance. And she demonstrated this state even when we could barely scrape enough money together to pay the rent. She was constantly living in a state of offering. Food, of course, was her favorite thing to offer, but it was a metaphor for so much else. I’m convinced that she absolutely believed that something terrible would happen to her children — and her grandchildren and her friends — if they went 20 minutes without eating. And nobody could ring our doorbell — whether the Federal Express man or a parent dropping off a child for a play date — without being asked, indeed urged, to sit down and try whatever she’s cooking in the kitchen. And nobody could leave our house without goody bags filled with food.

Diane is right when she commented on my article, Manolo Blahnik Feminism The Right to Choos, that although men have received the memo,

“maybe they just can’t read the memo they received.”

I responded,

“lost in the male.”

We men didn’t get the memo. The Memo from the Manolo Blahnik feminists sent to us men that American girls haven’t become wild, they’ve become empowered.

Sadly, the memo seems to have gotten lost in the male. Especially when it comes to what happened at Duke in the form of Lacrosstitution.

The awful mess going down in Durham with Duke brought to the forefront of my mind the essay I wrote, Manolo Blahnik Feminism: The Right to Choos. Inspired by CJR Daily

Of Duke, and Princeton, and Jocks, and Sluts by Liz Cox Barrett

“With nearly a month to go before the Duke lacrosse players accused of rape have a hearing in court on May 15 — how many cable TV talking head hours between now and then? — we’re confident that bad reporting on the case will not be in short supply.

To date, however, this piece by ABC News’ Adrienne Mand Lewin gets our vote for most regrettable. It is the sort of story that might provoke a good guffaw, were one reading The Onion (indeed, it reads like an Onion story, though perhaps with less thorough reporting).

But on ABC News? Not so funny.

Everything about this piece is iffy, starting with its raison d’être.

Lewin’s lede: “They’re on every college campus where sports teams succeed: groupies who want to date athletes — or at least have sex with them.” And? Is this news?

In paragraph nine, Lewin more or less confesses that, no, it is not news, but that she is using the Duke situation to pretend that it is. “It’s certainly nothing new that college students have sex or that athletes are popular. But in light of the rape allegations at Duke University and the cancellation of the men’s lacrosse team’s season there — while a separate issue — players’ behavior and the impact it can have on a team are now at the forefront of many college students’ minds.”

But what is actually “at the forefront” of the minds of the six college students Lewin interviewed for her article (three of who would provide only their first names) is not “players’ behavior and the impact it can have on a team” but rather the behavior of those sex-crazed jock groupies we met in Lewin’s lede.

Lewin writes: “At Princeton University, where the men’s lacrosse team is regularly ranked as one of the best in the nation” — and, we’d add, where Lewin apparently started and ended her reporting on what’s on “college students’ minds” — these jock groupies are known as “laxtitutes or “lacrosstitutes.” (Eat your heart out, Onion writers! Either that, or start recruiting from Princeton). Distracted by these “laxtitutes,” Lewin spends most of her article focusing on their behavior rather than on “players’ behavior and the impact it can have on a team,” as initially promised.

So how do “laxtitutes” behave? Writes Lewin: “Candi Arner, a Princeton freshman, said her friends knew three girls who between them had slept with nine players on the team.” You know, sort of like how Simone in “Ferris Bueller’s Day Off” knew that Ferris was sick because her “best friend’s sister’s boyfriend’s brother’s girlfriend heard from this guy who knows this kid who’s going with the girl who saw Ferris pass out at 31 Flavors last night.”

This, as Salon’s Rebecca Traister has noted, is “journalism hearsay.”

It’s going to be a long 27 days.”

Manolo Blahnik Feminism: The Right to Choo’s

I call the new feminism Manolo Blahnik Feminism, which is a super-sexual, super-sexy, and super-confusing form of self-empowerment. Ariel Levy calls it “raunch culture” and I believe that it is going to blow up in American women’s faces.

I believe very strongly that there are too many dangerous contradiction in the new feminism, in the new American woman.

I attended a panel on gender differences in the new feminism and my question to the panel was, “I understand how empowering strappy stilettos, butt jeans, bare bellies, and camisole tops are for the modern woman. It is all about taking back the sex, taking back the gaze, reclaiming the control of what is cute, what is hot, what is sexy, it about taking back control, reclaiming feelings of pride in the body, pride in the shape and tan earned from an active, outdoorsy life. That’s all fine and good. Unfortunately, we men never got the memo. I never got the memo.”

In fact, I feel sort of like a fox in a henhouse. Why? Well, all of my old-world, unenlightened, seduction techniques work now better than ever! In fact, the truth is, I am really too nice for the Manolo Blahnik k feminist.

The Manolo Blahnik feminist wants to be taken, wants to find a real man, wants to take risks and have a great time; she pursues a doctrine of devil may care.

Well, no matter what the Manolo Blahnik Feminist thinks she wants and no matter what she thinks she’s doing, she is actually walking into a very dangerous trap.

We men are not responding to this self-empowerment with amazement and respect, we’re responding to it by licking our lips, by taking advantage, by rubbing our hands together, and by trying not to jinx this out of being. We are pretty well convinced that what is happening won’t last: the Manolo Blahnik feminist fancies herself the aggressor, the buyer, the pursuer, the seducer. And we men are what she is after.

All we see is, “man that girl is fine — I’d like some of that.”

As men in such a seller’s market, we don’t have to choose. We can date another willing girl every night. We can push sex much faster than we ever could believe. The three-date rule? Ha! That’s the official rule, but now the first date counts from the night we first met. Oral sex on the first date has sort of become de rigueur — if you want a second date.

Instead of getting control, the Manolo Blahnik Feminist has relinquished control to us men.

And even worse, this is a very dangerous game. We men are bigger, stronger, and not all of us are so nice. I personally have a lot of experience with women who are survivors — survivors not just of dating or their 20s, but survivors of sexual abuse and rape.

I have loved them, I have befriended them, and I worked through relationships with women who have survived sexual abuse and rape.

Its always an ugly story and the world is never the same. We just have not received the memo. This kind of exciting, naughty, passionate, irresponsible, reckless indulgence in “raunch culture” is going to result in one hell of a cultural hangover.

Many women will be unable to recover from this self-indulgence with any semblance of faith, trust, hope, or intactness.

And many men, too.

When it comes right down to it, who would have any of the right stuff to even have faith in marriage, the family, and children after indulging in such self-destructive, self-loathing chaos?

Not I.

I am not sure if modern women have it very good. Not nearly as good as would be expected. I attended college at a high point for feminism an academia, when a woman would still identify with being a feminist.

Not any more.