I was in Paris recently, walking and walking as I do, when I realized that the black boots I had worn for several years were on their last legs. What better place to purchase a new pair than in Paris? I allowed myself to consider the splurge as I wandered shops and tried on pairs of boots. Just the day before I had, with my friend Karen, an American expat… Read More »Black Boots for the End of the World
I freely admit that before I lost my health insurance coverage I barely thought about it: I paid the bills, had my babies, had surgery, went to the doctor, and most of what I needed was covered by a very good policy. Until I lost it and found it nearly impossible to get coverage again. Now the coverage I get is barely half as good as what I had and… Read More »Vote as if Your Very Life Depended On it: it Does
In yoga class a few days ago, the teacher, a woman, began the class by saying that originally, yoga was a practice that only men were allowed to participate in. The young women in the class seemed baffled, especially a teenager whose father, the only man in the class, went on to ask if anyone in the group knew where the word “hysteria” came from. The teacher did, I did,… Read More »Why Feminism Still Matters
My mother married my father because, she told me in a rare moment of candor, she wanted to have sex with him. She was 25 and tired of pre-sex fumbling and stolen kisses. My father was, of course, far more experienced, having been in the Pacific Theater during World War II; far less discreet about his former life (and life in general) he told his daughters inappropriate tales of the… Read More »What We Need to Talk About When We Talk About Sex and Feminism
I was extremely heartened to read in the New York Times that having a good and open relationship with your kids, one in which you speak frequently and they solicit your advice, is a positive thing. Not that I ever doubted that. The proof, as they say, is in the pudding, and the pudding that is my children — despite occasional high temperatures and other mishaps — have turned out… Read More »Boomeranging Into An Empty Nest
Motherhood vs. Feminism? Give me a break. The New York Times recent forum with that title is just another example of the mainstream media ginning up a false dichotomy and presenting two ideas as opposing when they aren’t even mutually exclusive. And for the writers in this false “war” to state that motherhood issues pose an end to feminism shows a frightening but clear ignorance of what feminism was and… Read More »The Fight About Feminism and Motherhood That Isn’t
In the “this isn’t really news” department we have had, this week, Katie Rophe’s ridiculous article about how female sexual fantasies of bondage spell the end of feminism (a Newsweek cover story no less), a fake war between mothers who work outside the home and mothers who don’t: a war that the media has loved to burnish even though most women in the US have great respect for each other’s… Read More »Pay Close Attention to Those Behind the Curtain
After six hours of hard labor, I was told my son’s heartbeat was slowing. “Get him out,” I screamed. And they did, slitting me from top to bottom in an emergency C-section. I wasn’t at the hospital or with the doctor where I had received my pregnancy care. A torrential downpour at midnight just as I started my contractions (two weeks early by the doc but right on time by… Read More »Motherhood: The Fear Factor
(This post originally appeared on doesthismakesense.com) I’m writing this when I should be vacuuming. In pearls and heels and nothing else; well, maybe an apron, just an apron covering my front so that my ass hangs out, tantalizingly. In the hope, of course, that my husband, the only man with whom I have ever had sex, will come home and take me, there, in the living room, throwing caution (and… Read More »Being Fucked by Republicans. Fun? Not So Much
I am feeling very inadequate. While I have recently, at the age of 55, moved to a new city and a house, completed a new novel, and said good-bye to my last child as she heads off the college; while I have, in the past six years ended two marriages and started a new relationship, I have not, for example: climbed a mountain, alone, started a cupcake business, left my… Read More »WHY Must We Constantly Re-Invent Ourselves?