According to the Second Annual “Women And Major Magazines Cover Stories Monitor”, women were the full photo subject on 22 covers, earned 65 full photo cover story bylines and eight full photo cover credits, of the total 203 issues in 2007 of Business Week, Forbes, Fortune, Newsweek and Time. Not so good. Feh.
We’re approaching New Year’s, and we’re also approaching the 2 year anniversary of GWP! I launched the blog in January 2007, just as my first book (Only Child) hit the shelves. Since then, I came out with a second one and started a proposal for my third. As GWP friends know, this latest book proposal (still in progress!) has been a long journey, and not always so smooth. I’ve been wanting to compile a “lessons learned” post, to share some of the process with GWP readers who are similarly working on book proposals — or aspire to — cause really, friends don’t let friends figure out how to write books alone.
So speaking of said journey, yesterday I was listening to a talk by Buddhist teacher Tara Brach while on a walk in Riverside Park and she said something so true. At the time of the talk, Brach herself was working on a book. Writing, she was finding, involved a lot of “self.” And sometimes, what she needed was for that self to just get out of the way, so she could remember what mattered most, and what mattered first, and what needed to be said.
One thing I find helpful when “self”, or ego, or the internalized voices of critics (or however you define the obstacles that come from a mind that likes to work overtime, as so many of ours do!) is the “toggle” effect: Some weeks I’ll be going strong in my thinking and writing around the proposal, then I’ll hit a point of self-doubt. So I’ll give myself a break for a day, or two days, or three, and then come back to it again. When I’m in the book writing stage, I find it far more helpful to show up to the page consistently, every day. But when I’m in the conceptualizing phase, sometimes I just need to give it–and me–a mental rest, and just focus on other things (like all my consulting projects, for instance, which pay the rent). It may sound obvious, but sometimes it’s the obvious that’s the easiest thing to forget.
Lots of you I know are writing books while working other jobs (like, say, being a professor! or, addendum, a MOM) that demand your attention. What helps you stick with a writing project through its (and your) ups and downs? I’d love to hear.
(And gratitude to Virginia for introducing me to talks by Tara Brach!)
Had to peek my head outside the void once more to note that the top-emailed story on the New York Times website is about the “demise of dating”–yet another shocker of an article that misconstrues, simplifies, and wags its finger at the state of teenage sexuality. Read it here if you must.
The great thing about this one is that while it profoundly sums up teenage dating, or the lack thereof, as “sad,” Charles Blow, the author, hasn’t appeared to have spoken with one teenager about this issue–instead relying on the latest research. Of course, he provides no context for this research. And he plays into gender stereotypes, claiming that cons of hooking up “center on the issues of gender inequity. Girls get tired of hooking up because they want it to lead to a relationship (the guys don’t), and, as they get older, they start to realize that it’s not a good way to find a spouse.” Clearly guys aren’t interested in ever finding a spouse themselves. It’s truly amazing the number of strict binaries set up in this article: hooking up vs. dating (and never the twain shall meet); girl perspectives vs. guy perspectives; sad vs. not sad.
I don’t mind research into this “phenomenon,” (scare quotes very much intended), but this research is too often used to bolster scolding lectures, and researchers, or those who use the research for polemics, need tell us where this data is coming from: what age group, geography, socioeconomic status, etc, and acknowledge, even analyze, how this may play into their results.
Ok, back into the void. See you all in a week.
–Kristen
I’m in the thick of researching and reporting my new book on young people and social change (finally!) and it’s been bringing up all sorts of new and exciting issues for me. Sunday I spent the whole day with a group of New York City high school students who have developed a fascinating project called NY2NO. I’m profiling one of the co-founders, an awesome young guy named Alex Epstein.
NY2NO takes NYC-area high school students down to New Orleans and teaches them about community organizing and gives them a chance to participate in making folks lives better down there—whether recording oral histories from ninth ward survivors or cleaning water damage in the first floor of a public housing building etc.
One of the things that strikes me most about Alex is that he is so deeply committed to face-to-face interaction. He and his friends were so inspired by the experience of canvassing in New Orleans—essentially going door-to-door and asking folks what they need, how they’re doing, what their stories are—that he came back to NYC and decided to do the same with homeless people. He and three friends took a video camera and went out and asked people of all different ages: how did you end up on the streets? What could you imagine would help you get off the streets?
The stories he collected about abuse and neglect, drug addiction and interpersonal violence, were so sad, and sadly unsurprising. Alex’s courage, however, surprised the hell out of me. He approached folks who he has been socialized to be scared of or just ignore altogether with such tenderness and curiosity.
There are two lessons I’m learning from the research right now: one is that young people are deeply committed to face-to-face interaction and the power of storytelling, and the second, is that young people are far more adept than previous generations in making connections between local and national, and even international, issues. Alex saw the effects of institutional racism and poverty in New Orleans, so he looked at NYC with new eyes and started making all kinds of connections right in his own backyard.
Talk about hope.
–Courtney Martin
I’m late to the table with this one, but in case you haven’t seen it (as I hadn’t til last week!) I bring you “The Girl Effect” — an amazing video. Pass it on!
It happens every time this year. The pile of books that publishers have sent me unsolicited in the hopes for a review stares me in the face, creating a sense of guilt. Though I know that all publicists send books out widely as part of their general marketing strategy, I always feel, well, bad if we don’t end up reviewing a book that nevertheless looks fantastic. The book just sits on my shelf.
So in the interest of clearing my slate, and easing my guilt (oy), I’ve decided to do something different this year.
Below is the list of those books on my shelf MOST itching for a review. If any GWP readers (in the US due to postage expense, sorry!) would like to review one, I’ll send my copy out to the first person who requests it. You can email me at deborah@girlwpen.com and state the title of your preference in the subject header. These reviews will be “due” by the end of January, and I’m asking that they be short ‘n snazzy (700 words or less).
It’s a great opportunity for anyone who has wanted to submit a guest post this year but haven’t yet to start off 2009 with a bang! Ok, so here’s the list:
Isadora Duncan: A Graphic Biography
The Third Chapter: Passion, Risk, and Adventure in the 25 Years After 50
34 Million Friends
And a book I’ve mentioned here a few times but didn’t get a chance to give it the review it deserves:
Ready: Why Women Are Embracing the New Later Motherhood
Lastly, ANY book put out this season (or next!) by the publisher who put out Sisterhood, Interrupted — Palgrave Macmillan. You can find that list here.
And speaking of GWP reviews, do keep a look out soon for Elline Lipkin’s review of Mama, PhD: Women Write About Motherhood and Academic Life
January 22 will mark the anniversary of Roe v. Wade. My dear friend and fellow “WGL” (of Women, Girls, and Ladies traveling panel fame) Gloria Feldt, who is also a noted author/blogger, and one-time teen mom who rose to be the head of the world’s largest reproductive health provider and advocacy organization, Planned Parenthood, has an article in the current issue of Democracy Journal in which she rethinks the most famous Supreme Court decision of recent time.
And another amazing mama and activist, Rebekah Spicuglia, writes about the first global consortium of motherhood organizations: the International Motherhood Network (IMN).
Great stuff, on both accounts. (And congrats, you two!)
I have a mysterious helper when I type these days. Sigh.
Last week I sat down with a group of journalism students and they asked what we can do to make math cool for girls. “We simply need to make math cool in general, not just for girls,†I replied. The same goes for science. Science is portrayed as the only field that uses big words (it’s not like law is any better—have you ever tried to read the terms & conditions for Facebook?) and thus intimidates many to think one needs to be a rocket scientist to be well, a scientist. So when scientific studies are printed in the media that “prove†that working moms are happier than stay-at-home ones, or vice versa, or that feminism is to blame for the rise in women alcoholics, most people are unprepared to question the findings.
This lack of skepticism is scientists’ fault. Far too often we, (even though I haven’t been a practicing scientist in over a decade, I’ll lump myself in), don’t explain things in a simple way. It takes a long time to tackle those big words and we need to use them…when we talk to each other. But basic knowledge of science is a must in today’s society. Scientific literacy should be just as important to our education as knowing how to read and add together two numbers.
More and more I find that this scientific literacy is a must for women and girls in particular. As we have seen in the eight long years of the Bush administration women and girls health care has been politicized. Yes, most of the Bush administration has been politicized, but health care is especially touchy. I just heard a story of a friend whose pregnancy was going badly and instead of offering a termination immediately her doctor referred her to labor & delivery to birth the dying fetus. She said she couldn’t believe that she had the will to stand up at the time and tell the doctor he had better find someone to perform an abortion. This friend is one of the most vocal feminists I know and yet she knows that she almost folded under the cloak of “Doctor Knows Best.â€
When the Bush administration says that climate change has nothing to do with polar bears dying, we have photos of dead polar bears. When the Bush administration says that the morning after pill is an abortificant we don’t have a photos to counter. That’s the tricky thing with science and health care.
Our only defense is to educate ourselves. We should know how to spot when the science is bad or when the reporting is bad. Debunking is a science and often our bodies are a battlefield. Ladies, suit up.
Do check out the latest forum at The REAL Deal (the blog of the Nat’l Council for Research on Women, where, full disclosure, I’m consulting!) Kyla Bender-Baird took the lead on this one, and she’s pulled together a wonderful chorus of voices voicing hopes and dreams at this moment in history. The posts comprising the forum include:
The Next Generation of Women Leaders Speak Out, by NCRW’s Kyla Bender-Baird
Big Dreams for Michelle Obama, by GWP’s own Courtney Martin
Turning from Fear to Hope in Politics and Leadership, by Julie Zeilinger, who lives in Pepper Pike, OH and is a sophomore at the Hawken School, and whose young woman’s feminist website, www.thefbomb.org will launch in February, 2009.
Bringing Marginalized Women to the Forefront of Politics, by Jeanie Adkins, Development Associate, The Mautner Project
Safe to be Idealistic Again, by Jaime Holmes, Graduate Assistant, The Institute for Teaching and Research on Women at Towson
Moving towards New Leadership and Opening New Possibilities, by GWP’s own Gwendolyn Beetham
Looking Past the U.S. Borders in the Next Four Years, by Emily Falk, Senior Associate, Brand Management Marketing, Catalyst
Feel free to speak YOUR mind and be part of the forum by posting comments at the site. And if you like what you see over there, link love much appreciated, of course!
