Yearly Archives: 2010

Favorite current books and SF bookstores

Posted on by
3

Instead of counting sheep last night, I made a mental list of my favorite book stores in San Francisco. How weird to wake up this morning and see someone else made a list on the same thing in today’s New York Times.

Dog Eared Books in the Missionwww.nytimes.com Dog Eared Books in the Mission 

I was very happy to see a celebration of local bookstores, though The Times list is a little highbrow and genre focused for me. For example, City Lights in North Beach is undeniably a great book store with an excellent feminist/ women studies section, but it can be kind of oppressively intellectual to lose yourself in. If we’re talking about pleasure-seeking in bookstores, that is escapism into text, which is my goal when I enter a place, I’m more of a generalist; I like a bookstore with a good mix of highbrow/ lowbrow and a massive magazine rack. This can be a challenge because I don’t like superstores i.e. Barnes and Noble and Borders. So here are 4 local favorites:

Dog Eared Books on Valencia (which is listed in The Times.) This store has a good mix of new and used, and I also love the mix of books they choose to display prominently.

Books Inc, one in Laurel Village and the other on Chestnut Street, are perfect for me.

Christopher’s Books in Potrero Hill is my local store. I love it. At night, its all lit up with yellow light; one of my friends said of it, “18th street with Christopher’s Books is so cute; it looks just like Sesame Street!” It’s true, the street and the store have a comforting, homey appeal, though Christopher’s is very small, if you’re looking for classic, they may not have it (and it doesn’t have a magazine rack.)

I’m a bookslut, I read several at once. Here’s my current list of books I love that I’m reading now or just finished:

Just finished Big Girls Don’t Cry by Rebecca Traister. This is a great, optimistic analysis of the 2008 election. Traister writes a lot about the divide between young women and second wavers, and how a major problem with Hillary Clinton’s campaign was her failure to reach out to the younger generation. Even though their agendas were similar, the potential first woman president was framed as establishment while Obama got a monopoly on being the candidate of “change” (and of course hope!)

Traister, oddly, left my demographic out of her book: Gen Xers, women in their 30s and 40s with young kids who could have been Clinton supporters. I went to Hillary’s campaign with media advice, offering to train women in talk radio, op-eds, TV debate, and new media. They were not interested. One woman in charge of San Francisco volunteers asked me to do one workshop for them. In contrast, as Traister notes, Obama was brilliant about reaching to voters using all kinds of media including social. Traister told similar stories to mine about Clinton’s campaign and women bloggers in their 20s who had tried to help her out but were not used well.

Freedom by Jonathan Franzen. I’m kind of bogged down by the plot but the characters are great.

How To Become a Scandal by Laura Kipnis. This is a brilliant book. I especially loved the Linda Tripp analysis. Anyone interested in the intersection of politics and culture should read it.

The Pregnant Widow by Martin Amis. Never read Amis before, and he’s a great writer, though the sexism is challenging for me.

A Happy Marriage by Rafael Yglesias. I’m always looking for good fiction about marriage. This novel is romantic and beautiful, though very sad, the protagonist’s wife is dying.

My Hollywood by Mona Simpson. I just bought this. I loved Anywhere But Here. Simpson’s other work seemed like the same story recycled, though I’m excited to try this new one.

I Found This Funny edited by Judd Apatow. This is a really great fiction anthology that includes Alice Munro, F. Scott Fitzgerald, David Sedaris, Tobias Wolff, Raymond Carver, Lorrie Moore, John Stewart, and many more.

Childless and happy

Posted on by
5

The latest issue of New York Magazine has a seven page story on the longterm fallout from the Pill’s legalization in the 1960s and it’s subsequent infiltration into mainstream American sexual culture. The magazine’s cover photo pictures a woman sticking out her tongue, a white pill stuck to it, evoking similar imagery from the Sixties of young people eagerly ingesting tabs of acid. The message is, of course, that the Pill is just as insidious as all the other drugs that came out of the era; it’s ‘free love’ revolution no better than the concomitant drug craze that left my generation moaning about their parents’ addictions and irresponsibility, feeling as if were left to clean up after somebody else’s party.

The article makes the point again and again, that yes, contraception may have advanced female independence and sexual freedom, but it, too, has an irresponsible twin movement; it’s created a modern, multi-million dollar fertility industry fueled by women who delayed childbirth too long and now, in their thirties and forties, are miserable because they’ve failed to reproduce.

The article succeeds in perpetuating beloved myths about womanhood, all which spring from one essential notion: women desperately want to have children and women who don’t are unhappy.

Once you accept this basic tenet, a series of other beliefs follow as logically as a proof from highschool geometry. Women are naturally Madonna-like and possess the qualities we prize in good mothers; they’re dedicated, nurturing, and kind; their life’s mission is to find good fathers for their offspring; that’s why they seek out men who are powerful and rich and that’s why men are attracted to women who are young and fertile; and that’s why women aren’t motivated to be in positions of power and that’s basically why the world is the way that it is. Childless women are creepy, but they’re okay if they’re sad about their state.

The way the New York Magazine article falls all over itself to highlight female pain reminds me of how the media paternalistically  covers sexual assault survivors with gray dots so they don’t have to be ‘shamed’ again. Wouldn’t it be better if we had a society that actually recognized and valued those brave women for the heroes they are? Wouldn’t it be better if our culture actually valued childless women?

Bad things happen to women, but very often, they recover. Contrary to popular belief, they recover from assualt, from abortions, and from childlessness. They’d recover much faster and in far greater numbers if the world supported and valued them for their multiple roles and potentials instead of falling all over itself to celebrate motherhood as the primary female achievement. If for example, magazine covers didn’t show a woman crazily licking up a birth control pill like a tab of acid or feature multiple images of the latest starlets’ “baby bumps.”

There are also many women, perfectly happy, well-adjusted women, who don’t want kids. Elizabeth Gilbert, best-selling author of Eat, Pray, Love is one of them. She writes about her blissful childlessness in her book, Committed. Gilbert, successful and talented, is widely criticized for her self-absorption.

But here’s a crazy idea: having kids is actually just about the most selfish act (read un-idealized-feminine) a human can engage in. Rapidly growing world population issues aside, we have children because we think it will make our own lives more fulfilling; we want to create another human being with someone we love; or we are seeking immortality by continuing our gene pools. That selfishness isn’t bad by the way. All ‘good’ deeds are self-centered. God was smart that way. We give money away because it feels good or work for causes or support political candidates because they further our personal beliefs. But as Erica Jong notes in her recent Wall Street Journal article, when women have kids, their worlds can become very small and limited, mothers turning away from the world’s unsolvable, overwhelming issues into the self absorption of their own families.

The species needs to reproduce, we all know that. Having kids can be incredibly fulfilling, and it’s great that so many of us do it. But the under-reported story is not only the well-adjusted, happy women who live fulling lives that don’t involve children at all, but a culture, still desperately lacking in celebrating women’s other creative acts.

Making it through the morning w/o losing it

Posted on by
2

10 Tips

(1) Load up the coffee machine the night before

(2) Get a good night’s sleep

(3) Get up 1/2 hour before kids

(4) Make kids pick out & lay out clothing the night before (one brilliant mom I know dresses her daughter in her “tomorrow clothes” before she goes to bed)

(5) Only one chance to make requests for hairstyles

(6) Cereal for breakfast, put out boxes on the table; cook only one hot thing. If  they want something else, they can go to their food shelves.

(7) Parents, don’t start activities if kids will annoy you if they interrupt you  including checking news or email (and if your husband happens to be a musician, no playing the piano or ukulele)

(8) If you have a sitter and multiple kids, it’s great if  s/he has a driver’s license and can help with drop off

(9) Good-bye kisses for everyone

(10) Lexapro

Can’t get past the hair

Posted on by
4

On the blog, Girl w/Pen! Natalie Wilson writes about sexism and racism in Disney’s “Tangled:”

Renee of Womanist Musings points out, the glorifying of blonde hair – yet again – is problematic. She writes:

“As a Black woman, I know all to well how complicated the issue of hair can be.  Looking at the above image [of Tangled’s Rapunzel], I found that I could not see beyond her long blond hair and blue eyes.  I believe that this will also become the focal point of many girls of colour.  The standard of long flowing blond hair as the epitome of femininity necessarily excludes and challenges the idea that WOC are feminine, desired, and some cases loved and therefore, while Disney is creating an image of Rapunzel that we are accustomed to, her rebirth in a modern day context is problematic, because her body represents the celebration of White femininity.

…

The fact that Tangled is coming on the heels of the first African American princess is indeed problematic.  It makes Princess Tiana seem like an impotent token, with Rapunzel appearing to reset the standard of what princess means and even more precisely what womanhood means.”

I watched “Tangled” with my sister, both of us brunettes, and when we heard the line about how Rapunzel’s hair, if cut, loses its magic and turns brown, we looked at each other and started cracking up.

There is some other reference in the movie to “browness.” Does anyone remember what it is? Flynn takes Rapunzel into a bar full of drunken men, and he says something, or someone says something like: “It seems very brown in here” or it “smells brown.” Please tell me if you know what I’m talking about.

It is notable to, as Girl W/ Pen! refers to, that the princess death sentence is coming right after the first African-American young royal finally made her way to the animated screen. There’s lots of talk about ending the only cartoon vehicle that repeatedly allowed girls be stars, but not so much discussion about the racism involved in the timing of this decision. Also, I keep hearing that adjusted for inflation dollars, “The Princess and the Frog” did just as well as “The Little Mermaid.” If this is true, I don’t get why Disney execs claim the film was such a failure.

Again, I don’t want to be defending princesses here. I don’t like them. But I don’t like the way they’re being used to get rid of starring girls roles all together.

Natalie Wilson writes the cast of “Tangled” isn’t quite all white. On Rapunzel’s wicked mother:

Notably, Mother Gothel, Rapunzel’s evil abductress, has dark hair and eyes and non-Caucasian features.

According to Christian Blaulvelt of Entertainment Weekly, “Mother Gothel is a dark, dark character. I mean, she’s a baby snatcher.” Ah yes, and she is dark in more ways than one – her dark skin, hair, and clothing contrasting with the golden whiteness of Rapunzel.

Alan Menken, the musical composer for the film, similarly notes that “Mother Gothel is a scary piece of work. Nothing she is doing is for the good of Rapunzel at all. It’s all for herself” Emphasizing her manipulative relationship with Rapunzel, Menken admits, “I was concerned when writing it. Like, will there be a rash of children trying to kill their parents after they’ve seen the movie?” Wow – how about worrying if there will be a rash of children who will see DARK-SKINNED mothers (and non-wedded ones) as evil and sinister?

In addition to carrying on Disney’s tradition of problematic representations of race, the film also keeps with the tradition of framing females beauty obsession as evil and “creepy” (Flyn’s words) rather than as understandable in a world of Disneyfied feminine norms. A mirror worshipper to rival the evil queen in Snow White, Gothel is presented as a passive-aggressive nightmare — she is the tyrannical single mother that is so overbearing Rapunzel must beg for the opportunity to leave the tower.

I always ask my daughter when we’re watching these movies: where are the moms? Belle in “Beauty in the Beast,” no mom. “Ariel” in The Little Mermaid, no mom. “Jasmine” in Aladdin, no mom.

In the night

Posted on by
Reply

So right after I blog about what a great sleeper I am and what great sleepers my kids are blah blah blah, a stomach bug invades my house. All three kids are puking. Always at night. The kids are on the bottom floor of our house, all three in one room; my husband and I are on the top floor, so we hear the whole sequence of events on the baby monitor: a cough, then a series of coughs, then a splash.

One crying kid ends up coming to my room to sleep with me. My husband goes down to sleep in her bunk. She is so psyched to get in my bed that even though she’s just been throwing up, she’s smiling ear to ear, her hands clasped in front of her. She burrows in next to me and then she throws up all over my bed, something brown and thick, possibly refried beans. I want to cry. But she’s already crying. So I change her clothing, my husband changes the bedsheets, we get a bowl for her in case she has to puke again. She keeps talking and talking, for at least an hour. She wants to know all about Santa. How can he stay awake all night? Does he really stay awake or does he nap in the sled? When she’s finally quiet and back to sleep, I ‘m awake for another hour.

Maybe I’ll delete my earlier posts and open that Preseco tonight.

Drinking and parenting

Posted on by
3

I have not read The Three Martini Playdate, but the title cracks me up. Even though it makes me laugh, drinking and parenting don’t work for me.

In Nora Ephron’s last book, I Feel Bad About My Neck there’s  a piece called “What I Wish I’d Known.” I just reread her hilarious list, reprinted in an anthology called  I Found This Funny edited by Judd Apatow. One of Ephron’s maxims: “The reason you’re waking up in the middle of the night is the second glass of wine.”

My last blog post was about sleeping. I love sleeping. Love it. I think it’s the best thing ever. I love my bed, I love being in my bed. I think a lot of parents fetishize sleep. Ephron is right, alcohol messes with my sleep, even just a little bit of it. When I don’t sleep, I get cranky. Then I yell at my kids and feel guilty and horrible.

Not only am I meaner when I’m sleepless, I’m less productive. I’m self-employed, and I need to be highly motivated  to get anything done. I started a non-profit, and I can’t just show up for work and slog through. I’m also a writer, and I have little desire to write when I’m sleepless or hungover. I know lots of writers, incredibly famous and successful ones, have managed it: Hemingway (though he shot himself in the head) Faulkner, Mary Karr (though she got sober) But not me. Not with three little kids. Of course, lots of factors contribute to exhaustion. Some are just very easy to eliminate.

I’m sure lots of people can handle drinking a glass of wine or two–jeez– and many parents probably find kids less tiring than I do. I can’t imagine being a preschool teacher or kindergarten teacher, for example. I think I’d last about one hour. I adore my children,  but they’re energy suckers. Or maybe something more symbiotic, less parasite sounding. My kids make me incredibly happy, but I need to choose very carefully what else I allow in my life or I wouldn’t be able to do much else but amble through the day.

Not drinking makes me happier, nicer, more patient, and more motivated. It’s very possible I won’t always feel this way, but right now it’s working for me.

DVD series & date nights

Posted on by
10

Since I had kids, I can’t stay awake for a entire movie. Also, I’m not that into going out. I’ve tried to force ‘date night’ but the cost is insane– with the sitter, parking, and a movie or dinner. I’m also exhausted by the time we go out and starving, I’m used to eating at 5pm.

So here’s the solution: watching series. I love it! It’s perfect for our attention span, My kids go to bed at 7pm so Dan and I light a fire and watch. Its relaxing, cheap, and fun.

We started out with “The Wire” which, like many people, I think is the best thing on TV ever. Though it took me a long time to ‘get it.’ I saw the first episode in the hospital, after I had Rose, and had to watch it, literally, over 10 times before I could follow the plot.

Now we’re watching “24.” We started watching this on vacation, when the house we were renting had it in their DVD library. Its entertaining but total propaganda. Everyone in the show is always watching FOX News. The hero in the episodes we just watched is the Secretary of Defense. His daughter spotted the villain at a Heritage Foundation dinner. And the idiot of the show is a lawyer for Amnesty International. The series is basically a dramatized justification for torture. That said, it’s well acted and keeps your attention.

Any suggestions for us when we’re done? I tried “Mad Men” which I understand is about sexism, not sexist. I liked it very much. But it depressed me. I can’t watch it when I have three little kids.

Most annoying girl characters in books

Posted on by
2

On  kids books: the worst of the worst: Amelia Bedilia and Little Miss Naughty. I actually have a hard time with the entire Little Miss series.

Let me know your thoughts on irritating girl characters. I know some of you aren’t fans of Fancy Nancy (I am) or Eloise.

On sleep: On a happier note, my kids are such great sleepers, I’ve adopted what I taught them “the schedule!” To deal with insomnia, I started turning off my light at exactly the same time every night– 10pm. I’ve been doing this for about a month and sleeping better than I have in years. Part of that may be my kids are all sleeping through the night too. I also used other tips from a book I read on sleep by William Dement, including stopping using the computer and dimming the lights a couple hours before bed.

Hope everyone had a great Thanksgiving. Ours has been really nice but not at all a vacation. Looking forward to Monday.

Disney/ Pixar male execs stop movies starring girls

Posted on by
28

At first it seems like possible good news. Disney/ Pixar announces: no more fairy tales, code for princess movies. Great! No more damsels in distress who end the movie by landing a man. Now we’re going to have a slew of new movies with cool girl heroes who bravely rescue boys from peril, exuding power and beauty by performing all kinds of risk-taking tasks and challenges.

But, no.

First of all, the reason the fairy tale movies are stopping is because Disney/ Pixar executives have decided that little girls aren’t worth making movies for at all.

The LA Times reports the fairy tale movies “appealed to too narrow an audience: little girls. This prompted the studio to change the name of its Rapunzel movie to the gender-neutral ‘Tangled’ and shift the lens of its marketing to the film’s swashbuckling male costar, Flynn Rider.”

Can you imagine if Disney decided to shut down a genre because it only appealed to little boys? Or if they switched a movie title so it wouldn’t risk highlighting a male star? It’s awful that this kind of radical gender discrimination exists for our smallest people– little kids who come into this world with huge imaginations and aspirations, big dreams that get squashed by a bunch of billionaire guys who run massive entertainment franchises.

Disney bigwigs Ed Catmull and John Lasseterwww.businessweek.com Disney bigwigs Ed Catmull and John Lasseter

The LA Times reports:

Alas, Snow White, Sleeping Beauty, Ariel, Jasmine and the other Disney royals were all born in the 20th century. Now, different kinds of Disney characters are elbowing their way into the megaplexes and toy aisles, including Pixar’s “Toy Story” buddies Buzz Lightyear and Woody, Capt. Jack Sparrow from “Pirates of the Caribbean” and a platoon of superheroes from the recent acquisition of Marvel Entertainment.

Do you notice something about the characters listed above? Because neither the LA Times reporter or the Disney execs mention in the article that we are losing girls (Snow White, Ariel, and Jasmine) and getting boys (Buzz Lightyear, Woody, and Captain Jack Sparrow.) The LA Times goes on to report the current roster of upcoming movies includes, surprise, surprise, three more movies with males in the title roles: “Winnie the Pooh” (along with his all male possy: Eeyore, Tigger, Piglet, and Christopher Robin?) and “Joe Jump.”

Disney/ Pixar execs at 82nd Academy Awardswww.zimbio.com Disney/ Pixar execs at 82nd Academy Awards

Remarkably, the men who run Disney/ Pixar, Ed Catmull and John Lasseter, go on in this article to congratulate themselves on their originality and creativity. I kid you not! This would be totally hilarious if these guys didn’t have such a hegemony on the kinds of movies– and accompanying toys and accompanying mass-marketing campaigns– our kids are exposed to. But because this boys club completely dominates kidworld, their privileging of males over females with no care at all, their disregard for half the population, is really sad.

Catmull said he and Lasseter have been encouraging filmmakers to break with safe and predictable formulas and push creative boundaries.

“If you say to somebody, ‘You should be doing fairy tales,’ it’s like saying, ‘Don’t be risky,'” Catmull said. “We’re saying, ‘Tell us what’s driving you.'”

>

Executives, Producers and stars of www.washingtonpost.com Executives, producers and stars of “Up”

Dude– could you be any more safe and predictable than putting out a line up of kids movies starring males? What’s driving you guys? Gender programming! And you don’t even see it! Or you are just pretending to be that cluless? Don’t you get that you are teaching and training girls starting at the youngest possible age that their roles will be only supporting? You are telling the girls of the world that they exist to make boys look good and to help them along on their cool quests and incredible adventures. How about some real creativity, Lasseter and Catmull? Can you try to imagine a magical world where girls’ stories are valued just as much as boys’ stories are? Where girls and boys are treated equally? Can you make a movie about that?

 

 

Women’s mags apologize and miss the point

Posted on by
6

Two women’s magazine’s recently issued profuse apologies for offending their readers, totally missing the point with their mea culpas.

Maura Kelly, a blogger for Marie Claire, wrote about the TV show “Mike and Molly,” which features a couple who met at an Overeaters Anonymous meeting. Kelly didn’t like having to look at fat people; she doesn’t think they should be on television. She wrote:

'Healthy model'? from Marie Claire's web sitewww.marieclaire.com Typical photo from Marie Claire’s web site 

I think I’d be grossed out if I had to watch two characters with rolls and rolls of fat kissing each other … because I’d be grossed out if I had to watch them doing anything. To be brutally honest, even in real life, I find it aesthetically displeasing to watch a very, very fat person simply walk across a room – just like I’d find it distressing if I saw a very drunk person stumbling across a bar or a heroine addict slumping in a chair.

When she was flooded with emails she wrote:

I would really like to apologize for the insensitive things I’ve said in this post. Believe it or not, I never wanted anyone to feel bullied or ashamed after reading this, and I sorely regret that it upset people so much…I was talking about a TV show that features people who are not simply a little overweight, but appear to be morbidly obese. (Morbid obesity is defined as 100 percent more than their ideal weight.) And for whatever it’s worth, I feel just as uncomfortable when I see an anorexic person as I do when I see someone who is morbidly obese…

OK Kelly, first of all, you work for a site that glorifies extremely skinny women; I have a hard time believing anorexia makes you uncomfortable. But say it does, let me explain something: criticizing women for being too thin doesn’t mean it’s okay to criticize them for being too fat. In fact, it’s actually the exact same thing! The issue here is judging women’s bodies– and human character in general– based on appearances. You’re assuming there’s some perfect body type and you can tell if its been reached just by looking. Guess what? You can’t! A person may look like she’s at a ‘perfect’ weight but she could be bulimic, a smoker, a cocaine addict. Plenty of thin people are unhealthy and plenty of fat people exercise and are disease free. Your apology should not be about attacking fat people but for acting as if it’s perfectly okay to judge a book by it’s cover. Most kindergartners learn that’s an inaccurate way to look at life.

Temptress LeAnn Rimeswww.popeater.com Temptress LeAnn Rimes 

Next up: Valerie Latona, Editor-in-Chief of Shape Magazine who aplogized for putting LeeAnn Rimes on the cover. Her readers were upset about it and she was very sorry; she didn’t mean to glorify a “husband stealer.” Are you serious? Is this the year 2010? Men are not helpless creatures, objects capable of being stolen by wicked women. Affairs are symptoms, not causes. Marriages are complex and mysterious. No one just walks away from a happy one for anybody. Demonizing women for tempting men is an age old stereotype based on fear of female sexual power. I wish Latona had responded to her readers that labeling and shaming LeeAnn Rimes is reductive to women and men.

Wouldn’t it be great if the media aspired to recognize women and men for the complex and varied creatures they are instead of reducing them to two-dimensional cartoon characters?