On 'Bridesmaids': Am I Doing Being A Woman Wrong?
Your introductory formulation about “doing being a woman wrong”/not knowing how to be a lady is troubling. It seems born out of a conflation of Jezebel's writers and readers, the mainstream media, and your immediate social and intellectual realm with the broader category of "women" without any real qualifiers. Sure, you briefly acknowledge that by "women" you mean the circles of women you travel in (IRL and online), but you also use the amount of money the film made as evidence that your “n” is enough. From there you feel comfortable extrapolating more broadly about What Women Want and How Different Michelle’s Wants Are. But is it not possible that among the people who shelled out money opening weekend, there were women who went and walked away with the same level of skepticism and ambivalence as you?
I just don’t see what it ultimately serves to offer up the contrarian back-story. Your point about Melissa McCarthy is particularly astute and well taken – why the preamble about how other ladies are gonna get so mad at you for making it?
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On 'The Phantom Tollbooth,' or, The Democratizing Principle of Literature
Well, I imagine that these little girls, if old enough to read, probably attend school. And at school, they're probably doing everything *but* reading literature with which they can directly identify, which I suspect is the reason the book club was created in the first place -- to countervail against the culture that puts the pressure on them to expand their horizons while not asking the same of the dominant groups.
So, I take the spirit of your point, but I'd say it's misdirected; the kids whose parents could not imagine them reading Roll of Thunder, Hear my Cry or whatever, they're the ones that need to heed your words.
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On Matt Cherette Is Going To Move To New York City
If this little Algonquin session doesn't convince little Matty and Co. to move to New York I don't know what will!
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On Hollywood Shockingly Dishonest, Man Argues
But you will agree that Requiem did celebrate "two girls, one dildo" action, right?
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On Your Fake Perfume Is Full Of Piss
So are you saying yes I should or no I should not click on these fragrance dot com banner ads running down the page? Because my online order will most certainly come off of a truck.
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On About Iris Robinson: "Being mad in Northern Ireland is different from being mad in any other place."
The last time someone suggested I read Anne Enright's writing I was stuck reading The Gathering for what felt like a year.
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On A Reader Reports from the Kitchen: Steak and Mac and Cheese
I dunno, guys. Fine, I wouldn't die without a bechamel, but I'm still not convinced that Macaroni And The Fanciest Cheese You Can Afford is not the way to go.
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On We're So Fucked
This scares me so much I want to gas up the SUV and ride away from it all.
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On The Great Fat Freakout
Agreed. Also, while I suppose it makes New Yorkers (well, Wilson really) feel good to imagine that only tourists are buying these products to take back to flyover country and distribute to their hick friends, that's hardly a winning business strategy. So the next article she writes should try to suss out the unfashionable New Yorkers who buy those flammable clothes, since they're the main reason Penney's came to town.
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On The 40-Year-Old Reversion
This reads like the plot summary to a movie trying to get funding via Kickstarter.