Wild Women Talk Back. Autumn Stephens
First published in 2004 by Conari Press,
an imprint of Red Wheel/Weiser, LLC
York Beach, ME
With offices at:
368 Congress Street
Boston, MA 02210
Copyright © 2004 Autumn Stephens
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from Red Wheel/Weiser, LLC. Reviewers may quote brief passages.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Wild women talk back : audacious advice for the bedroom, boardroom, and beyond / Autumn Stephens.
p. cm.
Includes index.
ISBN 1-57324-967-X
1. Women—Quotations. I. Stephens, Autumn, 1956-PN6084.W6W55 2004
305·4—dc 22
2004008975
Book design by Maxine Ressler
Typeset in Memphis, Kaufmann, and Fournier
Printed in Canada
TCP
11 10 09 08 07 06 05 04
8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
CONTENTS
Chapter One SELF - ESTEEM: ON BEING THE BEE'S KNEES
Chapter Two LOVE ‘N’ LUST ‘N’ STUFF
Chapter Three MIRROR, MIRROR, ON THE WALL: ON BEING A BABE(OR NOT)
Chapter Four WORKING WOMEN (OH, LIKE THERE ARE ANY OTHER KIND)
Chapter Five CHILD REARING AND HOUSE KEEPING
Chapter Six MORE WOMANLY WISDOM
INTRODUCTION
Please give me some good advice in your next letter. I promise not to follow it.
—Edna St. Vincent Millay
One-size-fits-all usually doesn't—a rule that applies equally to pantyhose and pertinent advice. And why, indeed, should it, given the teeming multitude of female forms, the panoply of human psyches? Of course, if you find it impossible to squeeze 60 percent of your body mass into a miniscule bit of fragile, “flesh”-colored nylon tubing, it is probable that you will lead an interesting and useful life nonetheless. Queen Elizabeth I, after all, never heard of Queen Size. Madam Curie didn't know from Control Top. Isadora Duncan managed to turn modern dance on its head without ever purchasing a single garment labeled “Nude, Size B.”
Likewise, we can all survive just fine without any more one-size-fits-all advice of the “horizontal stripes make the midriff appear massive,” and “never let a strange man have his way with you” ilk. As for the first statement, wouldn't that mondo midriff actually be an asset in fending off amorous attentions? And as for the second, as feminist author Robin Morgan once noted, “All men are strange.” Zero population growth is all well and good—but do you really want it to start with you?
This, however, is not your mother's advice. Ten to one, Mama never mentioned that some women are only interested in one thing. (To wit, the actress Valerie Perrine, quoted herein: “I don't care what a man thinks of me as long as I get what I want from him—which is usually sex.”) Unlike comic Roseanne Barr, your mother probably also failed to point out the positive side of PMS: “I think of it as the only time of the month when I can be myself.” And unless your maternal progenitor was the essayist Amy Krouse Rosenthal, she almost certainly never urged you to polish off that second slab of pie, cooing that “Nobody's last words have ever been, ‘I wish I had eaten more rice cakes.’”
From sex to motherhood (not, incidentally, unrelated phenomena), from physical appearance to self-esteem, from coping with a career to attaining wisdom, the dozens of Wild Women in this collection offer their own brash brand of counsel and commentary on themes common to most women's lives. Unlike those pesky pantyhose, the following tips and quips will do absolutely nothing to flatten your tummy. But surely they will lift your spirits.
CHAPTER ONE
Self-Esteem: On Being the Bee's Knees
Along with a few million other Baby-Girl Boomers, I was fortunate enough to grow up in an era when it wasn't a crime for a young woman to call attention to herself. Scholastic achievement, in particular, was an okay way for a girl to get her props. Yet outright showing off, at least in my household of origin, remained taboo. I still squirm to recall my mother's reaction when, during the course of a Girl Scout meeting which she was leading, I fell histrionically to the floor and lay there flopping like a landed flounder. I no longer recall the reason for this bit of childish buffoonery (I was perhaps ten or eleven at the time), or the reaction of my cookie-selling compatriots. But my mother's disapproving face and stern admonition reverberate through my memory cells to this day. “Why, that's just like saying, ‘Look at me! Look at me!’” she scolded.
Okay, so I adore my (loving, funny, shockingly smart) mother; I really do. And in the early sixties, with the sweeping cultural changes of that decade scarcely spawned, no doubt her reaction to a crassly attention-seeking daughter was the norm. Yet why, I now wonder, in a world where the wind can so easily be knocked out of a woman's sails (whether deliberately and cruelly, or just by the sheer impersonal weight of accumulated experience), would we strive to diet down our daughters' egos? Wouldn't it make more sense to shore them up to the size of J. Lo's celebrated booty, so that they'd still retain a little buoyancy, a modicum of oomph!, despite the inevitable deflationary effects of life?
Happily, the parents of the outspoken Wild Women in this section seem to have been spectacularly enlightened . . . or, perhaps, merely spectacularly unsuccessful at inculcating the creed of mouse-like behavior in their daughters. For amplification of your own sassy Attitude—or perhaps just your own Amusement—read on.
If you always do what interests you, at least one person is pleased.
—Katherine Hepburn, icon of American theater
It's very expensive to be me
—Anna Nicole Smith,