events

So women make up more than 50% of the population, and although we have a female Speaker of the House and leading presidential candidate, women currently hold less than 25% of all elected offices in the United States. If women are choosing not to run for office, how do we change that, and should we be concerned about equal representation? (Um, YEAH!)

So goes the description for this panel tomorrow sponsored by the Women’s Campaign Forum and the Wagner Graduate School of Public Service called Politics and the “F” Word: Does Feminism Matter? (um yeah part added by me.)

During what sounds like a hard hitting and interactive panel discussion, Hillary for President Senior Advisor Ann Lewis, Us Weekly Editor Janice Min, United Federation of Teachers President Randi Weingarten, NYU’s SVP of Public Affairs Lynne Brown and Community Board 1 Chair and WCF Board Member Julie Menin will address the important question of whether a “women’s agenda” still exists in today’s political life. In other words, why is it important for more gender-based representation to address women’s issues such as health care, child and elder care, education, etc?

Date: Tuesday, October 23rd
Location: NYU’s Robert F. Wagner Graduate School of Public Service, The Puck Building, 2nd Floor, 295 Lafayette Street
Time: 8:30AM Breakfast, Program: 9:00AM – 10:00AM
RSVP online or by phone at:
212-981-5285
FREE ADMISSION

Last night I went to my 20th high school reunion. It was kind of like walking into a fun house where you recognize the core, but everything is distorted. Must be how I looked to others, I’m sure, too.

Most of the men were money managers. Lots of women were home with their kids. The women looked hot. The men were balding and preppy. But then, I guess preppy is now back in style. The clique-y kids are still clique-y. The math geeks are now math professors. Plus c’est change, and all that.

This is a pic (well, sort of) of me with my two besties, Busy Lane (yes, that’s really her name) and Kathy Chaitin. Highlights included reunionizing with them, Ila Abramson, Molly Lane, Larry Goldstick, and Jill Oberman, who is now a sculptor; Sean Gourley, stay-at-home dad (who I *so* want to talk to for my next book!); Hetty Helfand (always loved that girl’s name); and Bob Emmanuel (who I walked down the isle with at graduation, lives in Wicker Park, is a lawyer, and collects art).

Tremendous kudos to the organizers, and to the folks who donated for the silent auction–including Christine Albrect who donated all the cool autographed stuff from her friend Gwen Stefani. Hey, I know Jessica Valenti, and Dee Dee Myers emailed me last week. Does that count?

Not that you can tell at all, but this is a pic of the much-acclaimed novelist Tayari Jones reading brilliantly last night at the packed Girls Write Now Friendraiser at the Slipper Room. Tayari was preceded by a surprise Slipper Room guest. Let’s just say it was my first official foray into the wilds of neo-Burlesque. (Won’t be my last!) More on my recent thoughts on the whole neo thing, btw, here, at the end of this Reuters article. But I digress. I hope the GWN ladies sold oodles of chapbooks and raised scores of new friends–they, and their writing girls, have so got it going on.

I love it when all things converge. New York Times columnist and writing teacher extraordinaire Verlyn Klinkenborg recently wrote a rather poignant reflection on young women writers and authority. Tonight I’m headed to the Girls Write Now friendraiser. And this week the Woodhull Institute has online modules up on “Your Authentic Voice and Advocacy” over at the Dove Real Women, Real Success Stories site. To honor said convergences, I’m posting a long expert from the dear ole Verlyn here:

I’ve often noticed a habit of polite self-negation among my female students, a self-deprecatory way of talking that is meant, I suppose, to help create a sense of shared space, a shared social connection. It sounds like the language of constant apology, and the form I often hear is the sentence that begins, “My problem is …”

Even though this way of talking is conventional, and perhaps socially placating, it has a way of defining a young writer — a young woman — in negative terms, as if she were basically incapable and always giving offense. You simply cannot pretend that the words you use about yourself have no meaning. Why not, I asked, be as smart and perceptive as you really are? Why not accept what you’re capable of? Why not believe that what you notice matters?

Another young woman at the table asked — this is a bald translation — won’t that make us seem too tough, too masculine? I could see the subtext in her face: who will love us if we’re like that? I’ve heard other young women, with more experience, ask this question in a way that means, Won’t the world punish us for being too sure of ourselves?….

These are poignant questions, and they always give me pause, because they allow me to see, as nothing else does, the cultural frame these young women have grown up in. I can hear them questioning the very nature of their perceptions, doubting the evidence of their senses, distrusting the clarity of their thoughts….I’m always struck by how well fitted these young women are to be writers, if only there weren’t also something within them saying, Who cares what you notice? Who authorized you? Don’t you owe someone an apology?….But whenever I see this transformation — a young woman suddenly understanding the power of her perceptions, ready to look at the world unapologetically — I realize how much has been lost because of the culture of polite, self-negating silence in which they were raised.

(Thank you, Lori, for the heads up.)

Quick pitch: So this year I’ve joined the Advisory Board of Girls Write Now. Staffed almost exclusively by volunteers, GWN runs a lean operation. We need help to continue and expand our services to more girls in New York City. Before the year’s end, I’m hoping to be making the largest donation I have ever made to any organization. Please join me in supporting GWN with a (tax deductible) donation. Your contribution will be put to immediate use, and help us keep this valuable organization vibrant and thriving for another year. Here’s how.

And/or if you’re in New York, join me at our fall friendraiser on October 18 (this Thursday!) at Bluestockings, the feminist bookstore, at 5:30pm and then cross the street to The Slipper Room for fun, drinks, and music at 7:30 (NO COVER). Author and “girlbomb” Janice Erlbaum, award-winning novelist Tayari Jones, and hotshot indy rockers Royal Pink will all be there. (And so will I!)

The video above showcases some amazing girls from the June 2007 Girls Write Now Spring Reading at Barnes & Noble Astor Place in New York City. Click play and you’ll see why I love this organization so much.

Nobel Prize committee, kudos: Doris Lessing. Al Gore. Who’s wooden now?!

Broadsheet has a good one up on Lessing. Upon learning the news, apparently, quod she: “I can’t say I’m overwhelmed with surprise.” Lessing continued, “I’m 88 years old and they can’t give the Nobel to someone who’s dead, so I think they were probably thinking they’d probably better give it to me now before I’ve popped off.” I loves me a salty Nobel prize winner.

So tonight, while Marco was (ahem) watching Blade Runner at the Zeigfield with the boys, I was moderating a panel at the Tenement Museum on the LES–with Laurel Thatcher Ulrich (Pulitzer-prize winning historian and author most recently of the much-anticipated Well-Behaved Women Seldom Make History) and Pam Thompson (far left), author of the just-released novel, Every Past Thing.

Pam’s writing is gorgeous and I highly recommend her book. Here’s Pam on YouTube. Meanwhile, Laurel’s title has launched a thousand t-shirts and has, of late, been the subject of much discussion. For more on the travels of the slogan since its emergence in 1976, definitely check out Laurel’s introduction, where she writes:

“The ambiguity of the slogan surely accounts for its appeal….To a few it may say, ‘Good girls get no credit.’ To a lot more, ‘Bad girls have more fun.’ Its popularity proves its point.”

BTW, the young lady to my right is Amanda Lydon, who organized us all and is a true dynamo. The house was full, and I loved the generational span. Ann Snitow was there, and told me about a course she’s teaching at The New School called–guess what–Feminist New York! Oh to be a fly on that wall….

Congrats to Women in Media and News (and Jen Pozner) on their successful action to correct history in the Tampa Tribune. The Tribune ran a follow-up article (“No Bras Burned, But They Did Revolt”) to correct the myth they were perpetuating in an earlier piece. The correction begins:

It’s a myth so pervasive, most of us believe it’s true.

I know I did.

So when information about ‘feminist bra burning rallies’ turned up in a timeline Maidenform provided for a Sept. 27 story on the history of the bra, I didn’t think twice about using it.

Bra-burning women’s libbers have become an important part of 1960s lore. I’ve heard stories about them. I’ve read about them in books and magazines.

The problem is, things didn’t go down quite the way those stories tell it.

That’s not to say bra-burning never happened as a public protest anywhere during the turbulent ’60s. But feminists didn’t set their bras ablaze in the spectacular way that has become legend….

In the groovy pic above, an unidentified member of the Women’s Liberation Party drops a bra in the trash barrel in protest of the Miss America pageant in Atlantic City, N.J., on Sept. 7, 1968.

And speaking of getting history straight, if you’re in or around NYC, don’t forget to come to the Feminist New York panel I’m moderating at the Tenement Museum tonight! Details here.

Just a quick reminder about tomorrow’s panel…Come one, come all! It’s free, there’s food, and there’s feminists.

The Tenement Museum presents…

Feminist New York
Thursday, October 11
6-8 PM

Lower East Side Tenement Museum Shop
108 Orchard Street at Delancey

I’ll be moderating the discussion with Pamela Thompson & Laurel Thatcher Ulrich, authors of the recently published Every Past Thing and Well-Behaved Women Seldom Make History. RSVPs requested (Bookclub@tenement.org). Check out Megan Marshall’s review of the latter in Slate, and Kathyrn Harrison’s review in the New York Times.

And next Wednesday, I’ll be speaking about Sisterhood, Interrupted at a private salon hosted by the illustrious Heather Hewett–the Gertrude Stein of the Valley (Hudson Valley). The same Heather Hewett who organized that fabulous conference on girlhood last weekend at SUNY-New Paltz, the one that featured “my gal” Courtney Martin. Can’t wait to see what Heather does next!

These pics are from the amazing dude ranch wedding I went to the other week. (Congratulations, Rebeccemy!)