Mexican moms teach their children to greet adults with a peck on the cheek and few Norwegian women see obstetricians (there, midwives rule). Or so, Cup of Jo’s Motherhood Around the World series teaches us. Reading about American expat moms’ experiences abroad got me thinking about how parenting in my own neighborhood might look to outsiders. Surely, folks from other places might find some of our habits peculiar. Indeed, when I pause to consider them, some of the things I’ve seen—and done—surprise me too.
Of course, what follows is a mix of generalizations, over-simplifications and triviality. But what isn’t?
Continue reading “Strange Parenting Rituals of the Young and Restless”Lydia Netzer’s debut novel “Shine Shine Shine” blasts through locales as far flung as Burma, Norfolk and the moon to land among my favorite novels.
Fueled by strange and nuanced characters, emotional heft and serious action, this stellar novel deftly probes the dark matter of marriage and motherhood. Over two generations, it mines the characters’ long-held secrets and festering wounds to reveal depths of strength and vulnerability.
Netzer brings many talents to bear on this project—deeply imagined characters, fresh humor and cinematic sweep. She moves assuredly from the subatomic particles of identity—the stories we tell ourselves—to the supergalactic forces of creation and birth, literally labor. And she does so without undue adherence to chronology or order. I loved its messy, far-ranging ambition.
The roving, offbeat novel is at once a romance involving two remarkable individuals bound together from youth, a belated-coming-of-age story and a moving portrait of motherhood in damning circumstances. It all orbits a woman, named Sunny, who appears to be anything but.
While other novels have earned more critical acclaim, this is one whose characters lodged themselves in my gut. It’s the kind of story that you digest, instead of merely read. Its ideas—particularly about women’s obligations to those we love and the deep reserves of fortitude we must tap to fulfill them—must be broken down, absorbed and consumed by the body.
Over and over again, the high drama of car crashes and intimate betrayals is grounded in the telling details of Sunny’s personal topography—the lies she tells, the objects she covets, the illusions she nurtures. As a reader, I witnessed Sunny reimagine herself through retellings of her story on the playgrounds of her youth, in an elective poetry class in college, at a housewarming party in adulthood, in her own mind. More importantly, as a woman-mother-wife, I empathized with the thorny tangles of manipulation and maturation evident within her shifting personal narratives.
“When you are sitting on a three-legged stool and you’ve kicked out all three legs, but you’re still sitting upright, must you assume that you’re just so good, you levitate? Or, must you assume that you were sitting on the ground all along?,” Sunny ponders when another of life’s meteors comes crashing her way. “When there’s nothing left to burn, maybe you have to set yourself on fire.”
Ultimately, like its protagonist, this novel doesn’t just shine, it blazes.
I began planning my daughter’s second birthday party just hours before it was scheduled to start (of course!). I knew from my crazy blog habit that I should have ordered gorgeous personalized party invitations, lemonade bottles and goodie bags adorned with elegant fonts, photography and tiara imagery from Pinhole Press weeks before.
But I’m a lover, not a planner. Or at least, that was my response to my mother, who asked about the party relentlessly in the two weeks leading up to it.
Continue reading “How to celebrate a two-year-old’s birthday”I’m on a quest to learn to cook this year, but that doesn’t mean I don’t have doubts about the whole thing.
I want to cook at home to save money, be healthy and create more occasions for my family to gather. I also want to use home-cooked meals to teach my daughter about personal wellbeing, the environment and their interconnectedness.
I do not want to be (or even pretend on the internet to be) a domestic goddess. I just don’t buy the cooking nostalgia served up by food writers and pundits who long for make-believe good old days. You know, the ones when smiling women with little economic and educational opportunity enjoyed spending their days in hot, confined spaces whipping up wholesome feasts.
I can’t mine my history for those days because they didn’t exist. And while I understand Michael Pollan’s point that Go-Gurt has major shortcomings, I bristle when he calls for us to eat what our great-great-grandmothers would recognize as food. It’s impossible for me to be wistful for the diet of cornmeal, salt herring and pork that slaves like my foremothers subsisted on.
Continue reading “Why Cook? Why Now?”My master bedroom is currently a blank slate, or a beige slate, to be more exact. It’s that shade of blah most frequently found in hotel rooms and apartment complexes. The neutral color is very tranquil–good for sleeping–and goes well with just about everything.
But we can do better. Here are my initial ideas for moving in a slightly more colorful direction. (NOTE: These are all things I really like. There is no advertising or sponsored content on this site.)
1. A watercolor that combines the beige and gray I love so much with a touch of color. This one is Andre’ Foreman’s Jade Elephant from E&S Gallery.
2. A pendant shade chandelier to add light and texture over head. This one is the Mod Pendant Shade Chandelier from Shades of Light.
3. A bold, abstract rug to keep things cozy like this Surya Signature Collection pick from Rug Studio.
4. An upholstered, tufted headboard makes a statement. I spied this Bernhardt Jordan Button-Tufted Wing Bed in the window of Ruth & Ollie in Richmond and have to have it.
5. A pop of color in the form of a Lulu & Georgia Wild & Free Pillow in Ruby Red.
6. A shiny bench for when sitting, not sleeping, is in order. This one is Ethan Allen’s Xanadu Bench.
First, a warning: Don’t judge “Wonder Women: Sex, Power and the Quest for Perfection” by its cover. The illustration and the title give the wrong impression.
The cover (designed by a man, incidentally) features a glorified stock photo of a white woman in stilettos, button-down shirt and trousers standing on her head while peering at a laptop. Outsized blood-colored boxes imprison white text stamped across the poor woman’s body.
Ugh.
Written by Debora Spar, a mother of three and the president of Barnard College, the book is related to sex, power and the quest for perfection. But, more interestingly, it’s preoccupied with the 101 ways that women set themselves up for perpetual disappointment, anxiety and dissatisfaction, by pursuing a perfection mirage.
The sex/power business reads like a primetime exposé and comes across as much less astute, inspired and upbeat than the book itself.
(Steps off soapbox.)
A Sweeping Account
Like the women it examines, “Wonder Women” is probably trying to do too much. Bloated with research and anecdotes, it is part memoir, part cultural history, part survey of gender research and part self-help—all with an upper-middle-class-white-woman bent.
Read it anyway.
In each chapter, Spar examines the siren song of perfectionism in a different facet of women’s lives—childhood, body image, love, sex, wifedom, motherhood, work and aging. She discusses the origin of off-the-chart expectations in each area, highlights the contradictions inherent in the pursuit of perfection and foreshadows its demise. We cannot hear this enough.
Taken separately, there are few surprises in Spar’s notes on the sexual revolution, evolutionary biology, eating disorders, contraception, childbirth, parenthood, relationships, glass ceilings and the beauty industry.
The book’s real achievement is in range, not revelation. It’s the accumulation of these doomed perfection quests from girlhood to death that astounds. Spar’s unrelenting variations on the theme of feminism vs. perfectionism over 300 pages make an impact.
This Book’s For You
I recommend this book for any woman who has ever piled on too many responsibilities and then buckled under the weight. And what woman hasn’t?
Read this book because of Spar’s voice. This accomplished woman (who might be suspected of having it all) generously illustrates the book’s arguments with examples culled from her own life. She comes across not as a distant academic, but as a real (if unusually curious and well-read) woman in the trenches, figuring life out as she goes.
Her personal accounts—like the time she crashed her minivan into a telephone pole racing to her daughter’s ballet recital—ground the book in a way that the raft of research alone could not. And her witty, opinionated tone makes otherwise dense material lively and palatable for readers.
Read this book because of its examples of real women making conscious trade-offs to pursue their big dreams. As I wrote in a previous post on not-to-do lists, women would benefit greatly from making more deliberate choices about what we’re going to do (and not do) in our daily lives. It’s the antidote to living by default, aspiring to unrealistic ends and disappointing ourselves.
Read this book for its cogent discussion of what the heck has happened to feminism, the institution of marriage, the workplace, standards of beauty and other pillars of women’s lives over the last 50 years. Agree or disagree with the specifics of Spar’s analysis, but appreciate her sustained exploration of why even privileged women feel unfulfilled and stuck despite unprecedented opportunity.
Resist the Myth
Read “Wonder Women” once for its sweeping review and then refer back to it as needed. Let it fortify you against the pressure to do more and more, better and better.
Feeling unsettled after reading “news” like this un-ironic account of the 17 creams and oils that comprise 72-year-old Martha Stewart’s beauty regimen from the New York Times? See Chapter Nine: Memories of My Waist. It’ll remind you that aging is inevitable, the media is largely inept at embracing it and women can (and must) make their own choices in response.
Thinking about adding yet another project, responsibility or expectation to your life? Refer to Chapter 10, where Spar writes, “[Women] need to realize that having it all means giving something up—choosing which piece of the perfect picture to relinquish, or rework, or delay. Having choices means making them, and then figuring out how to make them work.”
Go forth and work it!
P.S.
I just read that an updated version of “Lean In” is due out in April. Focused on recent college graduates, it will include new advice on finding a first job and listening to your inner voice. I hope “Wonder Women” gets a second printing with a better cover!
Dear Maya,
I’ve just accepted a great new position that will require me to work in an office environment. I’ve worked remotely for the past decade. While I never work in my PJs, my home-office attire is not career-worthy. I value being comfortable and also want to look stylish and professional. I have about $500 to spend. Help!
P.S. Also, do you have a suggestion about a bag that’s not a briefcase but could double as computer bag/pocketbook?
Style Challenged
Dear Style Challenged,
Congratulations on the new gig! After ten years of doing your own thing, you’re in for quite an exciting change. And you couldn’t have picked a better time to make the wardrobe leap.
Dear Maya,
Do you have a suggestion about a bag that’s not a briefcase but could double as a computer bag/pocketbook?
Style Challenged
Continue reading “Bag It: A Tote That Works for Professional Women”In honor of Throwback Thursday, I present me, then.
Glennon Doyle Melton has two God-given gifts: storytelling and shamelessness. Or so she declares early in her memoir, “Carry On, Warrior: Thoughts on Life Unarmed.”
“I decided that’s what God wanted me to do,” she writes. “He wanted me to walk around telling people the truth. No mask, no hiding, no pretending. That was going to be my thing. I was going to make people feel better about their insides by showing them mine.”
She then spends the rest of the book’s 266 pages putting her imperfections on display for our edification. We learn that she can’t cook and in fact has no pans. She’s inept at laundry, vacuuming and lunch packing. She’s done time and is recovering from years of drug and alcohol abuse and bulimia. Her criminal record gets her summarily rejected by adoption agencies and volunteer organizations worldwide. And her husband, worn out by such scrutiny and rebuffs, sometimes wonders if the children they already have might one day be taken from them.
Some of these revelations are hilarious. Others are disturbing. The result is a disjointed, uneven reading experience in which the texture and complexity of a life is addressed but not defined, and mined but not illuminated.
This memoir, which brings new meaning to the phrase “keeping it real,” is unlike anything I’ve ever read. Regular readers of Melton’s Momastery.com blog will no doubt take her frankness in stride. But as a new reader, it was jarring to see the intimate details of other people’s lives brought into her “reckless truth telling” crusade. I was distracted by concerns about how her writing was affecting those she wrote about. The breadth of her disclosures related to her family—her sister’s divorce, her young son’s sexuality, her husband’s infidelity—was too much for me.
Personal stories undoubtedly have public relevance and every woman should feel empowered to speak her truth. Yet too much of this book skirted lines a memoir shouldn’t cross: Exhibitionism for exhibitionism’s sake, moralizing, self-absorption and DIY therapy.
While Melton’s blog-adapted writing style and self-deprecating sense of humor can be charming in moderation, “Carry On, Warrior” missed an opportunity to distinguish itself as a book. As assembled, the chapters (a combination of blog post reprints and new essays) carried too much of the web’s informality into print, and the freshness of the blog posts paled on the page. The solidity of the book form begged for deeper contemplation, sharper perspective and some connective tissue.
I hesitated to write out these criticisms, influenced by the book’s relentlessly nonjudgmental stance. But then I recalled this wise passage: “Humility is how I survive praise and criticism of my writing, ideas, and beliefs,” Melton writes. “Because I remember that neither praise nor criticism is really about me. We are all just trying to find the truth. So I try to see different points of view not as reasons to step back further into my corner, but as opportunities to take baby steps toward the middle of the ring–if for no other reason than to see my opponent a little closer. That perspective change is usually all it takes to remember that I have no opponents other than my pride.”
Given that sentiment, I now can think of myself as less a hater than a perspective changer. I can crown myself a truth teller, too.
