The Bakery Lady

by Grace Andreacchi

The writer’s life is, essentially and not incidentally, a lonely one. You shut yourself up in a room, ignore the tempting sunshine, unplug the phone, and even refuse to come to the door when you’re ‘working’. You keep unsociable hours, skip meals, refuse invitations all in pursuit of the grand illusion. A consent to the absurd proposition that the reality inside your head is, for the duration, more important than the ‘real world’ is the sine qua non. All of this can get to be a bit much.

For a while I lived in an apartment on the Anzengruberstraße in Berlin, directly over a bakery. There were many advantages to living over a bakery. The bakery lady was everything a bakery lady should be, she was round and smiling, pink-cheeked and maternal. When I stopped in towards the end of the afternoon for my daily Brötchen she’d often insist on giving me two of three for the price of one. ‘You need to eat more,’ she’d say, shaking her head. ‘Too thin!’ Germany was ahead of the curve in the world obesity epidemic (this was the mid-nineties), and my naturally slim frame was rare enough to be considered exotic. In my lonely pursuit of the chimera it was enormously comforting to have this bakery lady looking out for me.

On those nights when I’d lost all track of time and lingered, bent over the page (we still wrote on paper in those far-off days) till the wee small hours, when that hour arrived when the world seems not so much asleep as dead and the over-active imagination begins to fear – there is nobody else on the planet left alive, I’m the only one… at that terrible hour when the blood freezes, ghosts walk, and fear eats the soul, at that very hour the bakery lady and her husband would arrive downstairs. I’d hear them clanking about as they opened the shop to begin another day of mixing and kneading and baking the bread, rolls and cake for the hungry hearts and stomachs of the neighbourhood. So I’m not the only one left after all, I’d think. The bakery lady is here. And with a sigh I’d lay down my pen and crawl into bed, drifting off to sleep to the elemental odour of baking bread. If you ever have the chance to live over a bakery, jump at it.

Copyright © 2008 Grace Andreacchi Hadas

Grace Andreacchi was born and raised in New York City but has lived on the far side of the great ocean for many years - sometimes in Paris, sometimes Berlin, and nowadays in London. Works include the novels Give my Heart Ease, which received the New American Writing Award, and Music for Glass Orchestra, and the play Vegetable Medley (New York and Boston). Stories and poetry appear in both on-line and print journals.Her work can be viewed at http://graceandreacchi.com.

Sssh! Let the cruelty begin: Wuthering Heights and the Child Abuse of Yesterday and Today

by Nicolette Westfall

I’ll never forget one of the first times I came over to The Gentleman’s house, where he lived with his parents while going through his doctorate program. He told me I couldn’t use the front door because it would disturb his father, who liked to sleep there after work every evening. I think I forgot and rang the front anyway. Later, he also told me to use the washroom on the main floor; otherwise the creaking of the stairs to the one above would wake his father.

I thought it very odd that a 20 year old male would fear his father that much. Afterwards, as I got to know the family, I experienced drunken family meetings that did not include his father—the rest sat around the kitchen table, cursing him for his tyranny. From what I hear, to this day, The Gentleman gives his father verbal abuse in kind, though it does not and will not ever even the score—he is his father’s son.

Had I even taken the time to think about my own childhood, where my mother and her addiction to benzodiazepine also left the household children in a perpetual state of silenced fear, I might have reversed my steps and left The Gentleman’s house, to never return. However, love is blind and the self, well, we are conditioned to destroy it, not protect it.

There were bits of history about The Gentleman that I blocked out, like the fact that he was a cutter, and that he spent whole days locked in his room, away from the world. What events lead to this state of mind certainly sprang from his father’s cruelty. It was akin to my mother’s, in which she inflicted various cruel tools of continuous physical and mental punishment upon me in order to erase the fact that she’d had me at such an early age. I don’t know his father’s reasoning behind the cruel and cold upbringing.

The Gentleman was no less cruel than his own father. Often, I’d ground the offspring to his room for the most trivial thing, just to keep him safely away from The Gentleman. Though he never hit us, his verbal manipulations were so devastating that he left us with barely any self-worth and this odd feeling of walking on egg shells even when he wasn’t in our presence.

When the man of the house kicks the woman, she kicks the child, who kicks the dog. After the end of the relationship with The Gentleman, I couldn’t keep my mouth shut about what went on behind closed doors. Talking to the girlfriends was not only therapeutic; it got them to open up about the frustrations and stressors they also tried to function with. We found that whenever we’d done something like yell at offspring, the best thing to do was call someone in the support system and confess it. Many women, however, don’t like to admit that they aren’t June Cleaver, and so, they struggle on with guilt and fear their only companions.

These memories started to bloom inside my head when I recently reread Emily Bronté’s Wuthering Heights, a story originally published in 1847 under the pen name Ellis Bell. Within it, the cyclical child abuse seems almost absurd—but for the fact that it goes on in all parts of the world even to this day. Grounding my son to his room to protect him from The Cruel Gentleman is not anything new, if Emily’s Nelly has anything to say about it—she puts Hindley Earnshaw’s son, Hareton, in a cupboard to hide him from drunken Hindley.

Heathcliff, another character violently abused by Hindley when he was young, goes on to torture anybody he can get his hands on. Well, as lord and master over the property (which includes male servants, women, and children), he has the legal right to do whatever he wants to them. Near the end of the story, he sees Hareton and Catherine II together and it reminds him of his long dead love, Catherine I, and himself. All the years of bitter hatred and the blood thirsty need for revenge turn into a self-realization moment of fasting until he dies, which leaves them heirs to his properties (which lawfully belonged to them in the first place). Quite the short, happy little ending –not really any compensation in return for reading an entire novel stuffed with abuses and triggers.

Today, the abuser does not need to die in order to stop or prevent cruelty. There are anti-abuse measures, like laws, which attempt to protect people and children from the devastating actions of traumatic domestic abuses. One of the major obstacles to preventing and eradicating abuse, however, is the silence which promotes and guarantees its cyclical nature. Fear of death, for some women, is enough to keep them silent as well. No easy solution can be reached, for each case is difference, but if we as a society can start to publicly talk about our collective experiences, then we will have taken the first step to acknowledging that child abuse is far more common than we are willing to acknowledge.

WACK! Art and the Feminist Revolution arrives in New York

by Lee Conell

“Where should I start?” I wondered when I wandered into “WACK! Art and the Feminist Revolution,” the show currently on display at PS 1.

“WACK!” is international in its scope, and with over 400 works from all over the world, I don’t know if anyone could have given me a compass and pointed me in the right direction. But I’m glad I started in the room I did: The first group of work I saw were Louise Fishman’s “Angry Women” paintings, a series in which the names of female activists and artists are energetically scrawled on individual pieces of paper next to the word “angry.” There’s Angry Gertrude, Angry Jane, Angry Yvonne, and, simmering along with the rest, Angry Louise. My grandmother’s name was Louise, so immediately “WACK!” took on that feeling of personal history, of looking through the most intimate and honest photo album: No fake smiles here.

Fishman’s “Angry Women” series was an important gateway into the show for me, not just because the names softened me to the work, but also because it was so wonderfully startling to see genuine rage at the world. I’m used to demands for equality couched in pleasant language, swaddled in sweetness; after all, being called an “angry feminist” today seems to immediately invalidate any and all of your arguments. “WACK!” shows work that refuses to back away from that rage, and that’s what made the show so refreshing for me (a “third-waver”).

Alongside that rage, “WACK!” demonstrates the exhilaration of speaking to the past and changing history through works like Mary Beth Edelson’s “Some living American women artists” which depicts a black and white xerox of “The Last Supper” in which the apostles’ faces have been replaced by women artists – Georgia O’Keefe is Jesus. Many of the artists in Edelson’s work are also in “WACK!” making “Some living American women artists” an interesting complement to the exhibition itself.

Edelson’s collages, which wink at the past, are very different from Martha Rosler’s “Body Beautiful” or “Body Knows No Pain” series, which is among other things a brutal examination of the media’s portrayal of women. One of the works from the series “Hot House, or Harem” was used as the cover for the exhibition catalog; in it, images of naked women, who look like they could be pulled out of a number of magazines today, crowd the page. Like “Hot House, or Harem” Much of the art in “WACK! Art and the Feminist Revolution” remains relevant: Senga Nengudi’s twisted pantyhose filled with sand reflect a weight from maintaining the feminine image that is still prevalent, and Margaret Harrison’s twisted superheroes (including “Banana Woman” — enough said) are still perfectly ironic.

The show’s wall text are bare and brief, offering the artist’s name, the work’s title and and little else. Because of this, I never felt lectured at during “WACK!” and it was easy to relate to the work and to place the work in a contemporary context. While some historical background throughout the show would not necessarily take away from this effect the close-lipped wall text makes sense: When the viewer approaches each artwork without a curator whispering its accepted meaning in her ear, the work continues to have space to grow and to generate new meaning. Maybe you’ll see your grandmother, a housewife with six children, staring out at you in “WACK!,” or maybe you’ll see yourself.

Say What You Mean

Karen Harrington is away promoting her new release, Janeology. But not to worry! Join guest blogger Grace Andreacchi during the month of April for further ruminations on the the fabulous life of the emerging writer.

It’s a fine gift to be able to say what you mean, and when I say a gift I also mean, of course, an art. The pursuit of this ideal has occupied great minds down the tolling ages. Some writers require for this purpose a vast vocabulary and an infinitely flexible syntax, the liberal use of the semi-colon; in this way they create a scene in the virtual theatre of the mind, enabling us to see, hear, even taste as they do; they press upon us the full richness of the borrowed experience – this is what it is like to be me, this is the colour and heft of my mistress’s hair, this is the sound of her voice, this the exact replica in words of her perfume; thus they draw us inexorably, fastening us with slim golden word chains, the carefully applied cosmetics of adjectives and adverbs, the devious charms of the dependent clause; and now they have hold of us well and truly they draw us under, ever deeper, until we are so lost in the shimmering aquamarine depths of the sentence we daren’t come up for breath in case we get the bends; and so we surrender, plunging right down to the bottom of that resounding ocean. Others do not make use of these methods. They say what they mean quickly, and get out. Both have their points.

For a writer the challenge to ‘say what you mean’ involves daily choices of this kind, and those choices are themselves predicated on the general command of our one and only tool – language. I’d have no rigid corset of rules - language lives and breathes, its beauty is ever-changing, constantly renewed. But a nicely turned phrase, an elegant syntax are as sweet a thing as a Dior gown on the right woman. It’s not enough to mean what you say, ‘Even the gentiles do that.’ We ought to say what we mean, be it with infinite subtlety or disarming candour.

Whether or not a writer means what she says is another matter entirely. It’s possible to mean a great deal more than you say, and, of course, a deal less. For an example of the former, the great poet of Heian Japan, Ono No Komachi:

Seeing the moonlight, spilling down through these trees,
My heart fills to the brim with autumn. (tr. Hirschfield & Aratami)

Examples of the latter we will, alas, always have with us.

Copyright © 2008 by Grace Andreacchi Hadas

Grace Andreacchi was born and raised in New York City but has lived on the far side of the great ocean for many years - sometimes in Paris, sometimes Berlin, and nowadays in London. Works include the novels Give my Heart Ease, which received the New American Writing Award, and Music for Glass Orchestra, and the play Vegetable Medley (New York and Boston). Stories and poetry appear in both on-line and print journals.Her work can be viewed at http://graceandreacchi.com.

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A Look at Harriet Beecher Stowe’s The Minister’s Wooing and Married/Involved Women Today

by Nicolette Westfall

Well, I did it: I got through all 578 pages of Harriet Beecher Stowe’s The Minister’s Wooing. I survived the flowery 19th century language and constant satirical jabs at puritanical bible-beating of the religion Stowe grew up with—Calvinism. It’s a significant work of American literature that offers a romantic contrast (and poor comparison) to The Scarlet Letter. What kept me reading the 1859 novel to the last page was Stowe’s humorous portrayal of a clueless but pure girl, Mary Scudder, and how she deals with the Puritanical pressures of 18th century days in Newport, New England. Like any “good woman” of her time (or any time), she is expected to survive a marriage made for communal advantage without getting too depressed or developing things like the sinful habit of cheating on a drab hubby with someone she’s actually attracted to—for better or worse.

The book itself, a hardback edition printed in 1887, was pretty fragile; if I wasn’t careful, the pages tended to rip with the motion of turning. I guess their state reflected that of woman’s identity. Mary’s friend, Madame Virginie Frontignac, notes that men already rule the world, so they need to stop manipulating and scheming women out of the only thing left to them to possess (their own hearts). Knowing that Frontignac is addicted to manipulative Col. Aaron Burr, Mary keeps Burr from her.

Stowe offers many such time-worn insights into human nature, which still ring true today. When Mary finds out that her lover-to-be is dead, she does the right thing by her family and the community, agreeing to marry Dr. Hopkins, the much older, bland, naïve preacher—his redeeming quality is that he is anti-slavery and isn’t afraid of arguing it in the face of slave owners who fuel the town’s economy. Sure, in the end, he presents as admirable, but he’s just not the man Mary loves.

Comparing the 18th century protagonist to modern women, I see a little bit of Mary in the martyrdom of some women I know. Of course, men can be just as guilty of puritanical self-punishment when it comes to marrying and staying with women they truly don’t like or love, but this blog is about the “weaker” sex, and since we’re considered such, we need all the help we can get. So if you’re looking for analysis on men in Stowe’s work and solutions to male-specific marital woes, please look elsewhere.

You’ll have to forgive me, I’ve gotten a bit long-winded—I suppose it’s just residue from reading Stowe’s overly descriptive and detailed story about women who either do or don’t marry men that they’re ill-suited for, like the female characters in a Jane Austen novel. It’s all that family pressure—or persuasion— and fear of not pleasing the guy who asked for your hand when you weren’t interested that has me questioning a society of women who settle with the wrong person for seemingly all the right reasons.

The wrong marital choice today often comes from the dread of being alone or fear of financial instability. It also continues to stem from the heavy conditioning women have undergone throughout the ages that brainwashes them into believing they must please men first, children second, and if there is any energy left over, the household. (That’s right, taking care of ourselves isn’t even on the list.)

I know a career woman who is married to a man out of duty. To note, she is in love with another man, but since she’s been with this boring fellow so long, she felt obligated, and besides, her real soul mate/lover doesn’t have a secure job with benefits! It’s the same thing that happened to Stowe’s other sympathetic female character, Madame Frontignac, who married for economic reasons; she’s so “hard up”, she desperately falls for Burr’s slimy advances.

Another woman I know is with a less than honorable man. He’s taken to dictating to her that she can only listen to music that he likes, and she’s slowly losing her right to hang out with the girls and so on. According to this man, an isolated woman on a short leash makes for a better wife. Marital abuses aside, if the dysfunctional couple stopped bickering at home, in the car, out in public, and at events, they’d probably stop speaking, because they’d have nothing to talk about. But hey, the bills are paid and she can afford a regularly booked manicure! It’s the mindset she was dutifully raised in, like so many women during the time in which The Minister’s Wooing occurs—and now.

According to Stowe, these women’s relationships with men are not healthy, for many reasons, including failure of staying faithful to their Nature. Likewise, Mary, at the mere thought of never seeing her dead lover again, becomes quite subdued and depressed, despite dutifully accepting her role as the good preacher’s wife to be. The local seamstress Miss Prissy Diamond, and freed slave Candace, come to the rescue, saving Mary from her self-inflected martyrdom. Stowe provides a happy ending in the book for all—unless you count the “well-bred” womanizer, Burr, who loses terribly in return for his amoral treatment of the women he preys upon.

I’m not sure if the women I know will break free from the abuses arising on both sides as a result of the inequity in relationships. Reason doesn’t play into it. Women today often don’t have the tight knit female support networks they did back in Mary’s time. We just don’t need the wisdom or support of other women like Virginie, Prissy, and Candace, because with it, we might think more carefully about our choices in life partners and consider avoiding the grim future unhappy ones make.

This Writer’s Life

What could you tell about me from this picture of my aunt and mother (right) taken in 1959?Mothers and daughters: these are the relationships I most enjoy writing about. There is arguably no other relationship that is more influential on a young woman than that of her mom.It’s true what that great Irish Proverb says, What’s in the marrow is hard to take out of the bone.With my first book, I began charting the links between family relationships. There are many links in the nature/nurture spectrum. One of the simplest and most evasive is the products our mothers used. Their lotions, detergents and cigarette brands all create a picture of family history, whether we use them today or not. One of my friends even said she recently bought a hand cream and when she got it home and applied it, she realized it was what her mother had used. The scent of it brought back a flood of memories about her childhood and times when her mother held her close. In those times, the fragrance was close and intimate. All these things rushed back to her via a simple hand-cream purchase.Thinking about these questions helped me to chart many of the mother/daughter relationships in Janeology. What the characters chose turned out to be less fascinating than why they chose them.So if I were in your house now, would the products you use tell me anything about your mother?

Margaret Atwood’s The Edible Woman: Stay Single or Be Eaten Alive

by Nicolette Westfall

Single hood —it is a fate that not many choose, but it is far more appetizing for this body than the alternative; even when I was with the Gentleman. He was the most recent relationship I had and it lasted 3 ½ years. (4 if you count his syrupy sweet courting while still attached to another female corpse.) By the end of it, I really was John Belushi, even in the middle of the long, dark nights. My body ballooned out, and refined sugars provided one of many crutches to hold as the Gentleman ate the remaining self-worth I had tucked away in my Swiss Cheese mind—but thankfully, he accidentally left a few crumbs behind.

He humiliated me one night in a pub. I have this unwomanly habit of treating both men and woman equally important in our society—it isn’t something that wins over friends let alone male lovers. He tried several approaches to get me to see the error of my ways, all to no avail. In punishment, he brought one of his side dishes out to his birthday party for me to sample. There wasn’t much there; no intellect, no fleshy meat, no personality, no good looks, no style, nothing but irritating verbal vomit, as the two of them sickly touch flirted before every one else’s disturbed eyes.

I’m afraid I didn’t respond properly to my lesson like the good little girl he ordered me to be—I turned around in the parking lot and walked away. I was finished. I had no idea that he was actually watching me out of the corner of his eye while he nodded in automatic rhythm to the candy coated girl. She intently hung onto his Gentlemanly word and responded with expected awe. Despite his self-proclamation that night that he was a true “Gentleman,” while pouring her a drink, he followed me down the dark street and forced me to get into the car with them.

It wasn’t my fault that my body made a scene which embarrassed him and shattered his polished public control over me—it simply refused to eat the intense humiliation the Gentleman was trying to force feed me for my own good! I smiled and told him “Have a nice day tomorrow!”, knowing that as I walked away that night, I’d never see him or his half-eaten side dish ever again.

Later, I began to doubt myself and question my sanity. Who in her right mind would embarrass her man like that?! Never mind that he had completely destroyed me for being an independent woman instead of the whiny drip that was glued to him all night. I was ashamed and wondered if what he’d been trying to tell me all along was true—that I was indeed CrAzY, iRrAtIoNaL, and PaRaNoId.

Fortunately, I stumbled upon Margaret Atwood’s The Edible Woman one day while at the library. Turns out, Marian, the main character, she’s also got a problem like me—she runs when her man, Peter, expects her to conform to presentations that do not jive with her true self. She can’t cope and off she goes!

Atwood has been inside my mind—or maybe I’ve been in hers! Either way, after reading the book to discover a fictional character has also bolted from abuse, I no longer fear that I am insane. Her story washed away my man-made paranoia and I realized that I’m just not the piece of cake the Gentleman tried to wolf down.

In the end, it’s a happy ending for the Gentleman. His career is ceaselessly churning out American green backs, he now lives in the suburbs, has a shiny car, a spit-polished reputation, and, most importantly, a loving, doting, subservient woman who focuses on picking out the perfect off white curtains to go with their sparkling white bed spread. She is pleasantly plump, with the precise amount of low-self-esteem. At the local pub, he plays on his Blackberry, chatting with potential new side dishes, while his main course (already devoured) stares off into space, a permanent smile firmly planted on her obedient face, her rose coloured skin blending oh so nicely with her crisply ironed white blouse and delicately flowered hair kerchief.

I don’t have to ask what she’s thinking because she’s shut her mind off—to use it would ruin his finicky appetite. As for me, as long as I’m expected to be the five course meal on a Gentleman’s well-ordered table, chewed and swallowed piece by piece, I’ll be eating outside, under a tree, with the other free birds who listen to wise women like Atwood, not predator lovers.

Ireland’s Rich Literary Tradition

In observance of St. Patrick’s Day, I decided to dust off some of my favorite books penned by Irish writers. C.S. Lewis. James Joyce. William Butler Yeats. Frank McCourt.

Alas, where were the Irish women of my collection? Painfully absent. That is, until now. In preparing for today’s blog, I found many I now want to add to my nightstand reading.

Particularly, Edna O’Brien.

Her first novel, The Country Girls, is a story centering around Kate and Baba, two childhood friends whose lives go on divergent paths in search of happiness and fulfillment in the 1950s. First published in 1963, this novel and O’Brien’s next five works were banned in her homeland for their depiction of sex in the lives of her characters; and were often criticized for her portrayal of females as victims of their own lives. Only after several decades have Irish literary critics come to an appreciation for her talents and contributions and the ways in which she has laid bare all the stages of a woman’s life – from girlhood to conflicting love affairs. And what resonates with me, is how some readers have expressed shock at the copyright date of O’Brien’s works, in disbelief that her ideas were written four decades ago.

Born in 1930, O’Brien was raised in an Irish convent in 1950s Ireland. Her works center largely on the private yearnings of women and their relationships with men and the repressive society in which they lived. More about her life can be found by reading “A Study of Edna O’Brien As An Exible Author” by Marita Liab.

I hope you’ll join me in adding O’Brien’s writings to your list of must-reads. Or if you have read her novels, let me know your thoughts.

Here are a few quotes from O’Brien.

“When anyone asks me about the Irish character, I say look at the trees. Mained, stark and misshapen, but ferociously tenacious.”

“Inebriations of love, shadows of love, fantasies of love, but never yet the one true love.”

“I am obsessive, also I am industrious. Besides, the time when you are the most alive and most aware is in childhood and one is trying to recapture that heightened awareness.”

Karen Harrington is the author of JANEOLOGY, the story of one man’s struggle to understand his wife and her sudden descent into madness. (April 2008) www.karenharringtonbooks.com

Koren Zailckas’ Smashed: Boozing Up the Anger — A Cue for Girls Gone Wild Women

by Nicolette Westfall

There are so many angles the issue of getting drunk and losing control can take. I decided to go with the angle of female reactions to the fact that many men do not respect or treat women as autonomous beings with their own minds. I chose the “Girls Gone Wild” video empire and Koren Zailckas’ New York Times Best Seller Smashed: Story of a Drunken Girlhood as the examples of how women deal with the view that they are merely objects for male entertainment – with coy acceptance or scarred apathy. These reactions by women provide fuel to the fiery argument posed by Globe and Mail columnist Karen von Hahn: Despite past waves of feminism, the value of women (even as a sexual commodity) is declining.

I have a hard enough time on a sober daily basis in dealing with harassment from men who refuse to take “No” as an answer. Recently, I’ve found myself dealing with yet another guy who decided that my “No,” “Not interested,” and “Not dating” all meant “just playing hard to get.” His dismissive response makes me angry. But it does not surprise me when drunken women (and underage girls) give it all up to strangers for “a T-shirt, a pair of panties, and maybe a trucker hat”, according to one 2006 Los Angeles Times report on “Girls Gone Wild”. It is no wonder that this guy saw me as an object, to be taken when he decides.

In the case of the wildly popular “Girls Gone Wild”, where women of (usually) legal consent drunkenly take their clothes off and often perform sex acts for Joe Francis’ cameramen in exchange for a cheap T-shirt, women apparently degrade themselves for the very slim chance of scoring 0.0005 seconds of fame. After showing ID and signing a waiver, they are expected to perform according to Francis/cameraman instructions and their footage is given consideration for inclusion in one of the many GGW videos that go on the market and are aggressively sold through media marketing and a call center that pays callers base wages. It’s a cheap thrill for customers that objectifies and takes advantage of women who are usually under the influence of alcohol before the cameras roll.

Just the sight of commercials with drunken girls baring their bodies turns me off—I can’t watch, and it isn’t just because I’m not into porn. It’s like shooting fish in a barrel, and easy money degrading women for “Girls Gone Wild” founder Francis and his cameraman. Yet the girls who’ve gone wild themselves promote GGW, to the point that they judge breast sizes and complain when lesser looking women appear in the videos. They base their worth on whether they get into the videos—even giving up their virginity to Francis, king of the empire, for external male approval. They even note before stripping that their fathers watch the GGW videos. In 2002 Rolling Stone revealed one girl at a Florida night club didn’t even appear to be “weirded out” by the possibility her dad may watch her strip. Aw, let’s make Daddy proud! All in the family!

With increased access to the male sphere of equal opportunity and power, including more equal pay, women are also clearly experiencing the negatives, like binge drinking and drugging, and uncontrolled sexual activity. Lori Aratani of The Washington Post writes that teenage girls now “equal or outpace” teenage boys in binge drinking based on national surveys. The consequences, which reach beyond humiliating evidence that ruins future careers, include addictions and mental illness. In the teenage memoir Smashed, Zailckas works hard not to give herself away sexually. She tries to keep her body intact while getting hammered to dull the pain, yet her binge drinking led to sexual encounters that left her angry, doubting her ability to be a responsible woman. The reality is that society refuses to take women seriously and women sell each other out just for a glimmer of male sexual approval. It makes Zailckas rightfully angry.

Sure, women get the freedom of being publicly sexual when they want to, according to Francis and Hugh Hefner, but it cheapens their already low, and declining, value. Men like Francis and the frat boys presented in Smashed just don’t see anything of worth in women, since they think they can get the whole package for next to nothing – a cheap cotton shirt. Women continue to be merely objects in the male narrative, which involves drinking and sexual aggression, explored in Devon Jersild’s Happy Hours: Alcohol in a Woman’s Life, inspired by her sister’s struggle with alcohol. It’s a boys club and the only way women get in is by giving it all for minimal corporate cost. And these women are twice as likely to become angry alcoholics and die from alcohol poisoning as the men they compete with on the job. Don’t bother assuming that these men see women for what’s inside. Respect and dignity aren’t important. It is as Zailckas points out, “Every woman adores a fascist, the boot in the face.” Many women appear to like the abuse and they continue to take it and encourage other women to participate. The passive-aggressive anger of these women overflows like the countless glasses of mixed cocktails.

When women feed into oppression, it leaves them empty, or with a sense of sadness and bad memories that aren’t washed away with booze—and it ignites into anger. A recent study by the University of Tokyo concludes that “ethanol — an intoxicating agent in alcohol — does not cause memory to decrease, as widely believed, but instead locks it in place.” Zailckas never consented to the “Girls Gone Wild” self-degradation, but she recalls abuse while in a drunken state. Zailckas has since overcome the drinking and self-loathing, but she acknowledges that it has left her emotionally scarred. She experiences the anger that I get when men (and sometimes women) refuse to accept me as an autonomous person with my own mind. I wonder what would happen to the potential GGW women if they read Smashed. Maybe they’d think twice about letting men like Francis (who flies around in his own personal jet) colonize their bodies for next to nothing. The feel-good buzz is temporary, but the scars are permanent.

Sex and the Signature

Have you ever wondered how or why many female authors have written under male or gender-neutral pseudonyms? As it turns out, there are quite a few.

James Tiptree Jr. (1915-1987) was the pen name of Alice Bradley Sheldon, American sci-fi author. According to Tiptree’s biography, she was notable for breaking down the barriers between writing perceived as inherently male or female. In fact, it wasn’t until 1977 that readers knew Tiptree was a woman.

Another interesting example is J. K. Rowling. Having no middle name, her first Harry Potter book was published under the name Joanne Rowling. But before publishing her first book in the U.S., her publisher Bloomsbury was concerned that the target audience (young boys) might not buy books by a female author. The company recommended Rowling use two initials instead of her first name. Rowling chose K. for Kathleen, the name of her paternal grandmother.

The consideridation of pairing genre with pen name spurred me to ask a couple of my favorite contemporary authors why they write under their current nom de plumes.

T.K. Kenyon, author of Rabid and Callous

“I’ve been “T.K.” on and off for years, starting in 6th grade where there were 3 “Terri’s” in my home room and two of us got to choose new names. As I had been tagged with a diminutive (my given name is “Terri,” not even “Teresa,”) I went to initials.

When I graduated from undergrad with a bachelor’s in science (microbiology) and was looking for a job, I was told by friends and older people in science to use my initials on my resume because it was harder to get a job in science if you put a female name on a resume. (This was about 15 years ago, but it’s still true.”

Most of my other women friends in science also used initials. Women who sent out initialed resumes got more interviews and better jobs, both because they had more interviews to pick from and, very probably, because they were perceived as less “girlie.” In the scientific fields that I have worked in, and in the West in general, squeamishness and prissiness do not make a good job candidate.

When I did my PhD in virology, I went to “T.K.” for good, even in my personal life. Close friends and my husband abbreviate my initials to “Teke” if they are too lazy to wrap their lips around two whole letters.

In the writing field, using anonymous initials is less jarring to the reader when I write from both a male and female point of view.”

Rosemary Poole-Carter, author of Women of Magdalene

“For my first novel, WHAT REMAINS, I chose to write under my first initial and last name (though my photo on the back of the book was something of a gender giveaway). I reasoned that my very feminine first name might be associated in readers’ minds with romance fiction. There are some romantic elements in my work, but I don’t write category romances and don’t want to mislead book buyers. I write historical novels with some rather dark Southern gothic touches.

For WOMEN OF MAGDALENE, a novel that deals with misogyny in a 19th century ladies’ lunatic asylum, I decided to brazen things out under my own full name as a woman writing from the point of view of a male protagonist. Time to get past those outdated notions about what male and female authors are allowed to write.

I understand the point of a writer having different non de plumes for different types of books–one for the mystery series and one for the horror or romance or nonfiction. That’s sort of a branding device. But at this point in my life, I don’t really foresee my having the time to write multiple types of books. For now, each book is a piece of my heart, claimed with my own name.”

Other famous female writers and their first or career-long pen names:

Charlotte Bronte Currer Bell

Mary Ann Evans George Eliot

Louisa May Alcott A.M. Barnard

Antonia Susan Duffy A.S. Duffy

Amandine Aurore Lucile Dupin George Sand

Lula Carson Smith Carson McCullers

Phyllis Dorothy Jones P.D. Jones

Ann Rule Andy Stack

Karen Harrington is the author of JANEOLOGY, story of one man’s struggle to understand his wife’s sudden descent into madness. (April 2008) www.karenharringtonbooks.com

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