Posted on 02/12/2008 10:39:34 AM PST by forkinsocket
Hillary Clinton isn’t the only woman struggling to find an ideal mix of feminism and femininity, one that allows a woman to behave both like and unlike a man without being penalized either way. Mothers of daughters, even if they don’t support the former first lady, feel, if not her pain, at least her conflict. You need only look at the staggering success, in a publishing industry gone soft, of two advice manuals for young women, “The Daring Book for Girls” and “The Girls’ Book: How to Be the Best at Everything.”
Those volumes were inspired by “The Dangerous Book for Boys,” a gilt-embossed paean to old-school adventure that has nearly two million copies in print and caused a furor among the mothers of daughters who resented the implicit “Girls Keep Out” sign nailed to its cover. Aren’t today’s young women as eager — and as able — as boys to build a treehouse or shoot marbles?
They missed the point. The tantalizing chapters on building a go-cart and making secret ink from (presumably your own) pee were designed not so much for boys themselves but to induce nostalgia among fathers — who are typically the ones purchasing the book — for their own Huckleberry childhoods, those halcyon days before cable, Wii, Facebook and cellphones.
The girls’ books, which have a combined 1.6 million in print, do something entirely different: rather than hark back to — heaven forbid! — bygone days, they evoke nostalgia for a time that has yet to be: a girlhood that we mothers may wish we’d had but didn’t, one that we hope will prepare our daughters to be the kind of women we’re not sure we were fully able to become.
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
Hillary has no balance between feminism and femininity. She has no feminine site; only a Maoist Side and a Stalinist Side.
All of this is just so much psychobabble, I can barely stand it.
That’s funny.
I bought “The dangerous book for boys” for my daughters.
Then I bought The Daring Book for Girls for them.
The latter was 20 cents cheaper... :)
and Sistahs will be Sistahs. Checkmate, Hillary.
Forget HRC for a moment.
Does anyone else realize how absurd this sounds?
[rubbing eyes]
Moist side vs. Stale side...so that’s why they say she’s ‘toast!’
I suppose it would be mean-spirited to ask if there exists any proof for this assertion. I'm guessing that it represents a sample population of size N = 1, where that one is a person named Peggy Orenstein.
There are lots of things in life where the characteristic is desirable, but the “ism” of that characteristic is not only undesirable, it is detrimental.
Piety - good
Pietism - very bad
Feminine - very good
Feminism - very damaging to society
I bought the Daring book for my 11 year old daughter. I looked through it for any aggregious sexual or feminist nonsense and it passed.
Perhaps because I’m her dad, I have a relationship with her that encourages her to be more daring than my wife would promote. She’s my beautiful, tall, sports playing, fun-loving, video game playing (with her dad), celebrity distaining, fashion naïve little girl.
When the boy interest kicks in I’m going to be more upset than when she told me she didn’t like Pokemon anymore!
Yes, it's absolutely stupid. Women should just be who they are, and they should just let men be who they are. The vast majority of men are not out to oppress women. They just want to 'live and let live'.
My daughter cleans my clock at Guitar Hero III. That’s the thanks I get for letting her take all those easy lay-ups in basketball.
Orenstein has served as Managing Editor of Mother Jones magazine, and was a founding senior editor of 7 Days, a weekly magazine on New York City politics, arts and style. She was also an associate editor of Manhattan, inc. magazine and an assistant editor at Esquire. She has sat on the advisory boards of Oxygen Media's "Pulse Initiative"; the Smithsonian exhibition, "Game Face" on the history of women's athletics; Farallon Films; and "Kolot" the Reconstructionist Rabbinical College project on Jewish spirituality among adolescent girls. She has received awards from the Council on Contemporary Families, the Commonwealth Club of California, the National Women's Political Caucus of California, and Planned Parenthood Federation of America. Orenstein has been a San Francisco Public Library Laureate and was a United States-Japan Foundation Media Fellow as well as a recipient of the Asian Cultural Council's Arts in Japan fellowship. Her film work includes executive producing the Oscar-nominated documentary The Mushroom Club, producing and narrating a segment on the Minnesota State Fair for PBS's Life 360 series, consulting on the HBO documentaries Black Tar Heroin and Rehab, and appearing as an on-camera interviewer in the documentary Crumb. She has also been featured in the PBS documentaries, Digital Divide and Searching for Asian America.
Born in Minneapolis, Minnesota, Orenstein is a graduate of Oberlin College and lives in the San Francisco Bay Area with her husband, filmmaker Steven Okazaki, and their daughter, Daisy Tomoko.
Well, #4 just turned 18, and is going off to college in the fall. At some point, I'll work again, if we need my income, but I'm not stressing about it. I've never let outside forces like what job I did decide my 'worth' so it frankly doesn't matter one way or the other.
Kudos...
In making the choices necessary for you, not a daycare worker, to raise your children, you’ve contributed more to society than anyone can possibly understand.
LOL. Having driven around Irving High School and seen what some of those “girls” think is an appropriate outfit for school, I highly suspect the average 14 year old girl is engaged in a “girlhood” that mommy hasn’t yet participated in at 40-whatever.
I was at Ralph’s one day and a lady had her kid with her. Kid was young – I’d say maybe 13-ish. Young and at the “lanky” stage. She was wearing flip-flops that were the kind that are about 4” tall. She was wearing shorts that were entirely too small – probably 3 sizes too small and “painted on.” They said “JUICY” across the butt. Her two-sizes-too-small tank top was printed with a line across her budding (and braless) chest and underneath was written “must be this tall to ride.”
LOL. I was seriously thinking about making an inappropriate (but entertaining) comment but realized that as a fugly old man I’d probably just end up getting punched in the nuts and spending time in the custody of Irvine’s Finest.
It’s honestly too bad I wasn’t born (mumble mumble) years later than I was because there are more sluts-in-training than you can shake a stick at today.
Is it age or is it education that determines who?
Over Thanksgiving when the relatives gathered, there was a huge argument between a college age girl and a 40+ lady. The older gal was all for Hillary, the younger wouldn’t vote for Hillary if she was the only one running. The older gal could think of no reason to support Hillary other than she was a woman. The younger girl was able to go on and on with reasons. So is the dividing line age or education for the females?
When the argument was all over, they hugged but no minds were changed.
A woman will state a problem to a man not because she is seeking a solution, but just because she wants to be heard. This drives a man insane because he his hard-wired to take charge and fix things. "Why the hell are you telling me this if you don't really want a solution?" Men are entirely baffled by women's hard-wired need to constantly talk about everything under the sun, even when that constant verbal barrage does apparently absolutely nothing towards resolving the problem at hand.
A man will internalize a problem, physical or emotional, because he is containing it, evaluating it, and mastering it. This drives a woman insane because she thinks that if he is not gushing every thought, every feeling, every idea all over her, he doesn't really care about her. "What are you feeling right now?" ("Annoyed at you for assuming you need to know every damn thing that goes on in my brain.") To a man, he should be able on his own to solve a problem of any kind. Until he decides he needs outside input to achive his goals, constant female attempts to "help" him are a branding iron that the woman whose respect he seeks thinks he can't do it. Women are entirely baffled at how a man can exist without bleeding words all over everyone, and assume that if you aren't talking, something is wrong (usually with some indefinable thing called "the relationship".)
My father is a MOFW (Man of Few Words). My Father-in-Law was a MOFW, as well.
It was fun to go fishing with them. Could spend an entire day on the lake and hear nothing more than "Nice Bass" or "Pass me another beer, please." I'm sure that all of the lovely silence would have driven the girls crazy.
For my birthday present this year, I asked Mrs. WBill to take the kids to her Mom's for a Saturday Morning (any Saturday is fine by me....). That's all. I might sleep in. OR, I might just sit in the living room all by myself and revel in the silence. I haven't decided yet. :-)
It’s not entirely gender specific.
My dad is a MOFW. I tend to take after him.
My FIL was, by contrast, afflicted with what seemed to me to be verbal diarrhea. His son, my dh, tends to take after him. At times, I wish an idea could occasionally bounce across his brain without coming out his mouth.
I read once in a book that people are either Dead Seas or Babbling Brooks. I’m a Sea, he’s a Brook, and we do at times drive each other nuts.
As for the original article, it’s a silly bit of navel-gazing. The article and the title of her book both tell me that the author is far more interested in herself and her motherhood than she is in her daughter as an individual person.
If I'd had a daughter I'd have taught her to clean my Glocks, so she'd be ready to clean hers she was old enough to have one of her own.
Maybe that's why I get along with men so well. I've never felt the need to do this.
"What are you feeling right now?"
LOL I've never even thought of asking my husband that question. It seems terribly stupid and needy. I wouldn't even say something like that to one of my female friends.
I do, sometimes, just need my hubby to nod his head and say "Uh huh" so I can vent. But when I need that, I tell him so he isn't guessing why I'm talking about whatever. (By the way. He needs that occasionally as well, but more rarely than I.)
Hillary does not feel pain. She inflicts pain.
Her mother will actually chase you out the door and down the driveway, still talking all the while. I blame my father in law for that...he had the audacity to pass away a few years back, thus relieving her of her listening post and subjecting the rest of us to her filibusters.
My son has been afflicted, at least for the time being, with diarrhea of the mouth as well. With him, we get a running commentary...."I'm getting off the couch. I'm walking. I'm walking. I'm opening the door. I'm getting on the potty. I'm...." and so on. It *is* handy, however, as I can always ask "What are you doing" and he always tells me. "Playing with blocks" is fine. "Coloring on the wall".....OOP! got to see to that one.
I've always maintained that these introspective navel gazing self-help authors have very little of value to offer. If they had all of the answers, they'd be laying around on a beach or golfing away, happily retired...rather than working their butts off writing books.
Unfortunately, they also rule in much of academe, in the publishing industry, in entertainment, and in the MSM. So it would be laughable if they weren’t doing such a fine job of ruining America and subverting our traditional, Judeo-Christian heritage without which we would not have become the nation we did.
I checked it out thinking there would be pictures ... imagine my disappointment upon discovering this was just more about Hildabeast. ;)
My best buddy in the world is a FBI agent that lives out of town. When he and sometimes his dear family show up in town once or twice a year, we happily spend a day together playing computer shootemups, discussing hardware and software. and fixing whatever needs fixing around my house while tersely talking about whatever.
After such a recent day, my wife said "Hows Becky? What are the kids doing?" and a billion other Data Retrieval Requests, to which I looked blank eyed. I never thought to ask My Good Friend how he felt about anything...because anything he wanted to share with me, he would bring up. If his dad had passed away and he felt bad or good about it, if he was internally conflicted about life, or if he couldn't decide on what to order for lunch (Gold Star chili over noodles with cheese, every time) it certainly was his job to bring it up, and as a man I would be prying into his brainpan unless he suggested talking about it first.
My Dear Bride also LOVES attentive waitrons. If I am in a restaurant, I want go give my order, see it soon, and be left alone to enjoy the meal I paid for. If I need water, I will flag you down. If I wanted conversation, I'd ask my wife. If the food wasn't good, there wouldn't be anyone in this crowded place, and if it wasn't, I wouldn't clearly be eating it...and if I felt like volunteering praise over it, I would be eating at home. But you give my wife five minutes, and she will know the waitress' name, how many kids she has, and be trading recipes.
The last time I tipped over the mandatory 10% was 30% on a haircut this week because the girl just cut my hair and knew I didn't particularly feel like having a life altering experience of human interaction.
But that's Just Me, YMMV.
Quite.
If something distresses m’lady, then my deepest desire is to alleviate that stress ASAP by solving the problem ... and sitting around discussing how distressing it is does nothing but prolong the distress via neglect.
LOL. My experience is like the guy on the TV commercial with his dear one choosing clothes. What comes to mind:
1) Why the heck would you ask me, a man, a question about fashion, which I clearly know nothing about?
2) If you do value my opinion, why do you never choose the thing I think would look good on you?
3) If you don't value my opinion, why the heck do you keep asking for it?
My Dear Bride of 25 years pushed me to buy her clothes when we were first married. I bought her a perfectly beautiful condervative dress in a lovely purple, in her size, that I thought she would look beautiful in. She didn't like it, and never wore it once, and you know, I don't believe I ever bought her another piece of clothing. Odd, that.
...and she probably spent the next 25 years wondering why you never buy her clothes.
“Why don’t you buy me flowers anymore?”
“Uh, because 9 out of the last 10 times I did you chewed me out for them being the wrong kind, color, quality, cost, and/or timing?”
Time to buy that .50cal Desert Eagle, and make sure you clean that baby as she brings the beau over to introduce.
My first date in HS, her dad answered the door in his Sherriff uniform. It made the desired impression.
Preach on brother! I'm with you, there.
Nothing irritates me more than waitstaff who feel the need to slobber all over you the minute you walk in the door...."What can I do *personally* to make you feel better? Water? Napkin? Need your mouth wiped? Need a kidney?" Howzabout bringing my food, whydoncha?
I spent quite a bit of time in NYC for my work. Waiters there, IMHO, were perfect. "What can I get for you?" "Gimme a short stack of pancakes, bacon, cup of coffee with cream." "Thank you sir." ....And then they brought it. No glad handling, no "I'm stupendously THRILLED to be your server today" crap. They'd check in after a few minutes if I wanted more coffee, then bring the check. Fantastic.
Contrast this with a place I hit in ATL....My boss, who is rarely at a loss for words, called the waiter "A Total GayWad" (which is a term I'd not heard since 3rd grade, but it fit). The guy all but drooled on the three of us, and when my boss asked about a wine...it was on.
After giving a thorough, grape by grape description of some vintage, I asked if the water at the restaurant was OK. Sure enough, it was a "Distilled water, served over ice with a twist of lemon." I kid you not.
The Dangerous Book For Boys is a great book. I own it.
gee whiz - what a CV - Oberlin, San Francisco, Planned Parenthood. I thought I was reading something from The Onion.
gotta say the Crumb documentary was a nice profile of a really strange guy.
I started it with our wedding planning. She asked me what I thought. I (jokingly) asked for a StarTrek themed wedding with easy chairs for all of the groomsmen to sit in. I wanted to wear a Tux, with a cowboy hat, and a belt with a massive buckle on it, with a button on the buckle that would play "Hail to the Chief" every time I mashed it.
Strangely enough, she rarely asked for an opinion on the wedding again, thus saving me from a million questions about critical things like the size, color, shape, texture, and printing on the (paper, totally disposable) napkins.
Now don't get me wrong, I like to have some input. For instance, I asked that I be invited to the wedding. And that I be free to pick who I would like to be there. But beyond that......
Strategic incompetence works. If you've been married for 25 years, I'm sure that you've determined that as well.
everything the feminists do is derivative. they haven’t had an original idea in decades.
Wife, holding up towel: "Wouldn't this look nice?"
Me: "Uh...Where?"
She: "In our bathroom!"
Me: "We don't own a bathroom yet."
Wife, with a look like I her Groom am an Idiot: "No, of the house we are going to have oneday!"
I write fiction for fun. I have been a DM of great review, and regularly write, in my head, far superior endings for movies I have seen than the original ones. I am imaginative to a great state, but somehow I just can't solve an equation with two variables.
I think so. We have four smart, kind kids who can talk to adults as easily as their peers. Actually, they can talk to adults MORE easily, because they’ve never been much on popular culture, and what the rest of the kids were yammering on about never interested them much. They’re great fun to have around, but we don’t have all of them around often enough anymore to suit me. ;o)
Some of us are out to oppress women, minorities and children, so they'll be hardest hit. In fact, I'm trying to think up new and interesting ways to oppress right now!
/s
Is it age or is it education that determines who[supports Hillary and who supports Obama]?
Pollsters claim that Obama is a "wine" taste and Hillary is a "beer" taste. And also that the older women go for Hillary and the younger, for Obama.
without being penile?
Not in my house.
None of which have a rat's ass thing to do with ability, wisdom, experience, effectiveness, brains, or any other damn thing. It's all about FEEEEEEEEEELLLINGS.
Isn't it a joy to see where the emotion-centric bullshit of the past 30 years has brought us? No one who's supporting him can tell you what he's done or what he's proposing to do. Their enthusiasm all comes from how he touches them emotionally.
How pathetic we have become as a voting populace.
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