book reviews

I’m late to this one, but just read Michiko’s review of Thirty Ways of Looking at Hillary. (Thanks, Heather!). Michiko writes, referring to Hillary’s teary moment the other week,

The 24/7 replaying of that moment on cable television…reminds us how relentlessly Mrs. Clinton has been dissected, deconstructed and decoded over the years: by now her marriage, her hair, her pantsuits, her voice and her laugh have been more minutely anatomized than her voting record on Iraq, her (mis-)handling of health care during her husband’s administration or her stands on Iran, Social Security and immigration. This willful focus on the personal is underscored by “Thirty Ways of Looking at Hillary,” an intriguing but highly uneven anthology of reflections about Mrs. Clinton by a spectrum of well-known female writers.

Michiko criticizes the book by noting that in these authors’ essays, Hillary’s actual résumé and record are largely shoved to the side. I’m still reading the book, so not yet weighing in on that one, but it’s an interesting point (and one I keep blogging about here). A few of the contributors submitted comments for the Hillary forum I’ve put together for More magazine (going live soon!), and I’m attending a lunch soon in celebration of the book. Very much looking forward. Promise to report on it here.

A new study finds that girls’ self-image, namely, the extent to which they think they’re popular, may affect their future weight. As reported on CNN.com, the study found that “[t]hose who believed they were unpopular gained more weight over a two-year period than girls who viewed themselves as more popular.”

And meanwhiile, former Miss America swimsuit competition winner and Harvard women’s studies graduate Nancy Redd has come out with what sounds like a must-read for today’s girls. It’s a book called BODY DRAMA: Real Girls, Real Bodies, Real Issues, Real Answers . As blogger and feminist media studies teacher Megan Pincus Kajitani notes in a recent review,

“Bottom line, what Nancy Redd says, and shows, girls and women in this book is, in a word, revolutionary. It’s not for the prim our faint-hearted, I warn you. Although I also think those are the ones who may need this book most. Nancy Redd leaves no taboo body topic undiscussed — or [un]photographed — in this book, unlike any I’ve ever seen. (Not at all shocking to this Vagina Monologues veteran, but I have no doubt this book will be burned in certain sectors, like many truth-telling tales before it.)”

Redd’s message? Embrace your body. Respect yourself. Be healthy without striving for “perfect.” Sounds like many of us grown-up girls–myself included–need this book too.

(For more, check out the blog tour going on over at MotherTalk.)

Esther Perel is a Belgium-born therapist whose book, Mating in Captivity: Reconciling the Domestic and the Erotic,–just out in paper–has been said to read like a cross between Jaques Lacan and French Women Don’t Get Fat. Personally, I think it’s Fear of Flying meets Jane Sexes It Up—an implicitly sexy and intellectually fearless 21st century manifesto on sex inside marriage, for both women and men. According to Perel, mating in captivity is not a problem to solve. Rather, it’s a paradox to manage. And manage we can.

I recently had the chance to sit down with this brilliant, vivacious thinker at her Manhattan home. Snippets from our follow-up below.

THE BOOK

DS: What made you decide to write this book?

EP: There were a number of converging motivations. At the time of the Clinton affair I was intrigued at how adultery could become a matter of national political agenda in the US. Why was it I wondered, that this country showed a lot of tolerance for divorce, but was rather intransigent vis a vis infidelity when the rest of the world had traditionally been more tolerant of infidelity and less so of divorce.

In my professional life, I would attend conferences and be struck by an overemphasis on pathology and dysfunction and a tendency to leave out of the conversations the notions of pleasure and eroticism when addressing a couple’s sexual life.

The claim that sexual problems were always the result of relational problem and that one should fix the relation and the sex would follow, did not bear true for me. I saw many couples who’s relationship would improve significantly and it would do little to their sex life. I would see loving caring couples whose desire flat lined and not because of a breakdown in intimacy. I began to rethink what had often struck me, that it isn’t always the lack of closeness that stifles desire, but sometimes too much closeness. So I started to question a host of assumptions on the nature of erotic desire over the long haul that are held as truths and could use deeper examination. A number of questions occupied me: Why does great sex so often fade in couples who claim to love each other as much as ever? Can we want what we already have? Why is the forbidden so erotic? Why does good intimacy not guarantee great sex? And why does the transition to parenthood so often spell erotic disaster in couples?

DS: Your book is being published in 22 countries and 20 languages, and has just come out in paperback. I loved seeing all the different covers all lined up on your shelf. What aspect has surprised you the most about the book’s international reception?

EP: I originally wrote MIC from the position of a foreign therapist observing American sexuality. Now that the book has been translated broadly, what stands out is the pervasiveness of the breakdown of desire in all societies where the romantic ideal has entered. Never before did we have a model of long-term sexuality that was rooted in desire. People had sex for reproduction, or out of marital duty. Bringing lust home is the next taboo. Everywhere people are wondering about this fading of desire, they fill pages of books and magazine to spice things up. But if it were so simple, we wouldn’t need a new recipe each week.

The covers alone speak volumes about how each society deals with sexuality.
In my travels to 16 countries this year I got to experience some the unique tensions and changes that are at play in each society. It was as if in each country there was a theme that emerged: female infidelity in Argentina and Mexico, homosexuality in Turkey, the shift from reproductive sexuality when people had 12 children on the farms of Norway to the 2 or 3 kid family or the sexual consequences of the egalitarian model of Sweden to name but a few.

ON SEX, EGALITARIANISM, AND FEMINISM

DS: I’ve been thinking a lot these days about the word “egalitarianism”—or rather, the expectation women my generation grew up with here in the U.S. that our relationships with men would be marked by this sense of reciprocity and mutuality in all realms. Including the bedroom. And I’m interested in your argument that “mutuality,” “democracy.” and “equity” in bed result in very boring sex. Did feminism do something to sex? Tell us more about why what you call politically incorrect sex is so important for couples today.

EP: Indeed I do think that America’s best features–the belief in democracy, equality, consensus, fairness, mutual tolerance—can, when carried too punctiliously in the bedroom, result in very boring sex. Feminism fought hard to eradicate differences, and abuses of power, and we are still far from victorious. While I very much recognize these momentous achievements, I do think that it brought with it unanticipated consequences. To extricate power, aggression, difference is antithetical to erotic desire.

Sexual desire doesn’t always play by the rules of good citizenship. What excites us most at night is sometimes the very thing we fight against in daytime. There is a subversion at play in the erotic realm. The erotic mind is politically incorrect, thriving on power plays, role reversals, unfair advantages, imperious demands, seductive manipulations, and subtle cruelties. if we all fantasized about a bed of roses, we would not have such a hard time talking about all this, but the erotic mind is not always neat, or docile. There is a whole other side to eros.

DS: Have you had any particularly interesting conversations with feminist thinkers on this point of late that you can share? And generally speaking, what has been the feminist response to your book? (Not that there’s ever just one feminist response of course…But just curious!)

EP: I read the French feminist psychoanalysts like Luce Irigaray, and Elizabeth Badinter. I found the writings of Camille Paglia and Laura Kipnis most interesting. I was in a conversation with her at the New York Public Library and, as is often the case, any open conversation on the vicissitudes of desire leads to talking about the limits of monogamy.

The feminist thinkers in my field listen to me apprehensively sometimes wondering if I undervalue the importance for the need for security and safety for women to experience sex.

Others have engaged with me in conversations about how I choose to define the word “Intimacy”. But mostly I have received very positive feedback from feminist writers and practitioners that has really touched me. I feared that I may be taken to an extreme I did not mean to go, and it did not happen luckily. Mostly I am told that I wrote what we all know, think, feel and don’t say out loud. Now in the last months I have been preparing a series of talks on female sexual desire, or lack thereof, where I am introducing a different way to conceptualize female desire than the dominant models, and we shall see.

DS: I personally don’t buy into the concept of postfemnism, but is there such a thing as postfeminist sex? What would it look like? (Will I know it when I see it?)

EP: A few points come to mind: a focus that that expands from sexual sovereignty to sexual pleasure. The idea that we don’t have one sexuality, but a few sexualities in the course of our life. The shift to a more androgynous view of love that transcends the binary models of gender thinking. And an understanding that what is emotionally nurturing isn’t the same as what is sexually exciting. These are two different needs that spring from different sources and pull us in different directions.

MEN

DS: You write, “American men and women, shaped by the feminist movement and its egalitarian ideas, often find themselves challenged by these contradictions.” Please say more about how younger men—the sons of feminism, that is—are challenged by contradictions. Of what sort?

EP: In heterosexual couples, I see men who struggle to find a place for themselves sexually with their partner, and with how to express a masculinity that includes a striving force, a drive, assertiveness and that will be welcomed by the women. They are reluctant to reveal their sexual turn ons to their partner for fear of insulting her. Moreover, having lost the male privilege of a woman who’ll perform her wifely duty, they need to keep her erotically engaged, seduce her, make her feel desirable and interested in him. The idea that committed sex is intentional, premeditated consciously willed clashes against the myth of spontaneity. Another point is that if women can do all what the man does, where does that leave him? What is specific to him? Ou est la difference?

It is important for him to convey to her that the language of intimacy for him is often not verbal, but physical and sexual. Additionally, he wonders how to bring the erotic home, be safely ruthless with the woman he loves and respects.

Given the power shifts, men often struggle to integrate masculinity and sexuality in their intimate relationships.

DS: When we last spoke, you mentioned that you’ve seen more and more men struggling with a loss of sexual desire at younger and younger ages. Why do men seem to be experiencing this loss so early on? What’s changed? The women? Or the men?

EP: Well, we live in a time that focuses on instant gratification. The current generation of boys and girls, raised in a way where they never have to feel any frustration nor boredom, is turning out to be the one with the greatest difficulties with sustaining desire. If you have never wanted something, longed for it etc., you cannot know desire. Where there is no frustration there is no desire.

I am interested in the role of porn in the lives of coupled men, as well as the degree of sexual honesty and communication in relationships. The all-out exposure of sex on billboards does not translate in the privacy of our bedrooms.

To order Mating in Captivity, click here

I’m so pleased to post here–soon!–snippets from an interview I did with brilliant marriage and family therapist Esther Perel, whose book Mating in Captivity: Reconciling the Domestic and the Erotic, just came out in paperback. The book is currently available in 15 countries and will soon be published in Greece, Japan, Poland, Portugal, Romania, and Turkey. Not like I’m jealous or anything. Jeesh.

But seriously, Esther’s book is one that I’ve been recommending left and right, and if you haven’t gotten hold of it yet, and are wondering about the paradox laid out in the book’s subtitle, I urge you to run (don’t walk) to your nearest local bookstore in pick it up. And for the partnered among you: get a copy for your mate.

Ok, so clearly I’m on an image raid this morning. This is the cover of a new collection of short stories that circle around the themes of contemporary masculinity and war, which Courtney reviewed. Says she, these “stories explore domestic violence, rape, thwarted love, miscarriages, familial relationships etc. Basically there isn’t a hot button issue concerning masculinity and violence that this volume doesn’t touch, although always in an artful, complex way.” I think this just became the book I’m reading next. (Thanks, C!)

I remain slightly stunned that Hillary came in not second but third in Iowa last night. And at the way she is painted the establishment candidate. And at the strength of the venom against her. More election commentary coming soon from guest poster, sociologist Virginia Rutter. In the meantime, a quick bit on two books, just out:

Men Speak Out: Views on Gender, Sex and Power–a new anthology edited by Shira Tarrant–compiles the voices of 40 men who explore issues of masculinity, sexuality, identity, and positive change. The book lays issues on the table that are sure to stimulate a lively debate. It’s starting already at myspace and facebook. Check it.

Next up, Making Love, Playing Power: Men, Women, & the Rewards of Intimate Justice, by family therapist and organizational consultant Ken Dolan-Del Vecchio, debunks superficial theories about communication styles and geder roles and, according to the book’s description, “gets to the real reason so many relationships are in trouble — misuse of power.” The book reveals how gender, race, sexual orientation, and money set the foundation for personal power, and how power as domination drives most conflicts whether between nations, interest groups, or individuals. Join Ken at Bluestockings Bookstore in Manhattan on February 13 for a reading…!

Catching up on, well, life, I wandered over to one of my publisher’s websites this morning and found a slew of kick-ass titles for 2008. Here’s a taste:

The Happy Stripper: Pleasures and Politics of the New Burlesque by Jacki Willson is due in January 2008. Why Women Wear What They Wear, by Sophie Woodward, and Pornification: Sex and Sexuality in Media Culture, an anthology, are both due in February 2008.

Third Wave Feminism and Television: Jane Puts It In a Box, an anthology edited by Merri Lisa Johnson, is now out. And so is Geek Chick: Smart Women in Popular Culture, an anthology edited by Sherrie A. Inness. I am forever indebted to Sherrie for publishing my first piece in an anthology back when I was in graduate school–an essay on Nancy Drew. Happy 2008 Sherrie, wherever you are!

Just when you were craving another book that pits “bad girls” (ie, feminists, and those who have nonmonogamous sex) against “good girls” (the ones who don’t) comes Carol Platt Liebau’s Prude: How the Sex-Obsessed Culture Damages Girls (and America, Too!). While I’m guessing the parens and exclamation point are for earnest emphasis, I can’t help but think of Steven Colbert’s recent title, I Am America (and So Can You!) whenever I see this now. And so, I confess to taking the tone of it all a little tongue-in-cheek. That is not, however, the author’s intention.

The prolific and ever-savvy sex writer Rachel Kramer Bussel has written about the book over at AlterNet. Charges Rachel,

Liebau is not simply bemoaning the fact that it’s easier, and more socially acceptable, for young girls to be sexually active, but also that adult women dare to act this way as well.

…She makes the same tired mistake that so many do, assuming that “sexual freedom” means living in a world where sex doesn’t matter, to anyone. Whether we call that “do-me” or “wham, bam, thank you, ma’am,” there is so much more to true sexual freedom. But in her world, you’re either in a committed, monogamous relationship, or out there screwing anything that moves.

While I’m not all that interested in reading this book (and am grateful to Rachel for doing so for me), I am interested in the chapter titled “Do-Me Feminists and Doom-Me Feminism,” if only for the sake of seeing how recent feminist history, once again, gets played.

For more on this exciting trend, of course, see Wendy Shalit’s Girls Gone Mild.

No matter what you think of her, you couldn’t ask for a better book promoter than Rosie O’Donnell (ok, maybe Oprah, but Rosie’s not far behind). And watching Rosie talk to a group of 11 year olds at a feminist anniversary conference, well, I’ll admit, it gives me the chills.

In the clip posted here, a bespeckled 11-year old African American girl named Nia asks Rosie what inspired her to be at the conference. And Rosie answers, “Bella Abzug.” When Nia says she has no idea who that is, Rosie hands her Suzanne Braun Levine and Mary Thom’s new book, Bella Abzug, and says sternly: “You are going to write me. You understand missy? You are going to learn who Bella Abzug was and then, in about 15 years, I’m going to vote for you when you’re running for office.” Vintage Rosie.

And the new oral history just out from Farrar, Straus, and Giroux is vintage Bella. It makes sense that a history of this wonderfully raging feminist who a Time Out New York reviewer calls the “progressive grand dame” with just a touch of the Mommie Dearest relies on cumulative testimonial. Says lifelong friend Gloria Steinem, lovingly I am sure: “She scared the shit out of me.”

I never had a chance to meet Bella personally, but after reading this book, I feel like I have. The authors, Suzanne Braun Levine and Mary Thom, edited scads of interviews into a “conversation.” In their words:

[T]he story unfolds through anecdote, embellishment, contradiction, flashback and flash-forward, asides, commentary, speculation–as if the wide-ranging and ill-assorted cast of characters were gathered around a fireplace reminiscing about someone who stomped into their lives and left an indelible mark.

It’s an interesting way to tell the story of a life. And the story revealed sheds light on many compelling personalities who shared moments in Bella’s political legacy–feminist and beyond. As Levine and Thom highlight in their introduction, the book “speaks to a particularly powerful moment in which vital social movements converged in the second half of the twentieth century, every one of which featured Bella as a catalyst and creative force.” It’s that larger story, as much as the story of this remarkably human super-shero, that makes this book required reading for anyone seeking to learn more about an era that indelibly shaped our own.

If you don’t know who Bella was, ya need this book. If you know who she was or knew her personally, you’ll definitely want this book. And for those looking to take Bella Studies a step further, the Jewish Women’s Archive has great material just waiting to be mined.

Now here’s a guide to personal finance that tells it like it is.

In the introduction to their new book, On My Own Two Feet: A Modern Girl’s Guide to Personal Finance, Manisha Thakor and Sharon Kedar take the bull, so to speak, by the horns. In their words:

“Today, many women are choosing to marry alter in life or not at all. With divorce rates high, and given that women have statistically longer life spans than men, it is a basic fact of life that a high percentage of women will spend as much or more of their lives single than coupled. Therefore it’s unwise to think that Prince Charming is going to swoop in to solve your financial woes. In fact, it’s probably safe to assume that Prince Charming doesn’t have a clue when it comes to money, even if he acts like he does.”

These two savvy ladies (and Woodhull alums!) serve up oodles of insight on why so many women–and men–end up missing the boat on personal finance:

“It’s not that people want to make bad financial decions–its that they never learned the basics. Personal finance is not taught in most schools, and talking about money is still taboo in many circles. Parents often assume children will pick up the basics of personal finance on their own, and many parents don’t really have a grip on their own finances. As a result, millions of Americans simply do not know how to live within their means.”

I, for one, certainly would have benefited from some financial 101 coming at me at an early age. As a grown-up, I’ve had to play catch-up–and am still playing, and often feel like I’m missing the ball. But nuf with the sports metaphors. Just trust me. This book is a homerun. (Whoops–couldn’t help myself there.)

There’s much more about On My Own Two Feet here. And for bonus points, check out the Economic Literacy program over at Girls Incorporated and the Financial Literacy module from Woodhull that’s available through the Dove Real Women, Real Success Stories website. And pass it all on!