61 Frames Per Second by John Constantine Today in Nerve's videogame blog: Golden Axe dresses down to its skivvies. Plus: Spore takes on evolution, reaches a stalemate, and takes evolution out for a beer.
Dating Confessions by You "There is nothing hotter than a nice, shy guy. Because it's so damn hot to see what he's like underneath it all."
Scanner by Emily Farris Today on Nerve's culture blog: From our seat at the RNC, Sarah Palin makes Dick Cheney look like Al Gore.
That Girl? by Lynn Harris How the Republicans fell in love with a pregnant, unwed teenager. /dispatches/
REGULARS
posted 6/27/2005
promotion
I am the exact target demographic for the new book A Few Good Eggs: Two Chicks Dish on Overcoming the Insanity of Infertility, by Julie Vargo and Maureen Regan, who themselves have conquered fertility problems. And yet, soon after I started reading, it was all I could do not to march over to my fertility clinic and toss the book in the bin marked Hazardous Medical Waste. First of all, who in God's name puts a baby on the cover of a book about infertility? A baby? It's like putting a brioche on the cover of The Atkins Diet.
Second, can we please stop calling ourselves "chicks"? Please? The whole "take 'queer' back from the bigots" thing really just hasn't worked here. Deserved or not, "chick" still refers to something giggly and trivial, fun for the beach, good with General Foods International Coffee. All of which and I promise you I haven't entirely lost my sense of humor infertility is not. Do we "dish" about the "nuttiness" of depression, "gab" about how "kooky" it felt to have that abortion? The longer we try to make women's issues sound like good lite fun, the longer it'll take for them and us to be taken seriously.
Other word choice problems: infertility is not "insane." (Nor, as on page five, is it "wild," or "wacky.") Parties are insane. Prices are insane. Infertility is deeply painful, deeply shitty. Okay?
They also refer to a certain life change as "meanie-pause," but I'll let that go for now.
To be fair, this book does have good and yes, serious moments. It does nail how fertility-challenged women sometimes feel, to wit: "like big losers." The too-few paragraphs written by the authors' husbands are pretty awesome. And there's some okay medical information here and there, along with advice ("try finding a support group") with which one really can't argue.
With friends like these, who needs Sylvia Ann Hewlett?
But on page twenty-six the authors write, "Don't wallow in needless guilt. There's time for that later."
Specifically, on page thirty-six.
That's where Vargo and Regan start to wonder if "perhaps, just perhaps, we women aren't responsible for some of our own problems." They write:
"We get what we deserve when it comes to our fertility quotient . . . We fill our prime procreation years with career-climbing, job-juggling, thrill-seeking, and serial dating. We tone our body fat away, eat crappy food, and get as few hours of sleep as possible. Some of us smoke, do illicit drugs occasionally, and/or drink more than we should. We're not really sure we want to change our lifestyles, but we do want kids . . . eventually. Then we wonder why we can't conceive on command when we finally settle down at thirty-six or thirty-seven years old."
They blame women for sleeping around, partying hard, screwing up their hormones with birth control, getting STDs, having abortions, dating squirrelly guys, and being "selfish" (page forty-three) assuming all the while that "if Brooke Shields and Courteney Cox can do it in their forties, so can I" until, sure enough, they wake up and find their eggs' freshness date has come and gone.
If you're not feeling crappy or defensive enough by page 102, they say that the longer you wait, the more likely it is that your kid will have birth defects.
They also slam their own friends. They tsk-tsk about clueless Maura, who keeps putting off pregnancy in favor of vacations and home improvements. Another pal is forty-three and "desperately seeking a man" after years of "living in the moment" and choosing guys who weren't ready. "She is really suffering the consequences of this choice now," they write. "She is alone, totally regretting it, and obsessed with finding a man."
Jesus. With friends like these, who needs Sylvia Ann Hewlett?
Hewlett, if you recall, was author of Creating a Life: Professional Women and the Quest for Children , which warned women that focusing on their careers in their twenties and thirties would leave them bereft and barren in their forties. Which is perfectly appropriate material for a headline-grabbing screed that no one actually read.
But call me "insane" I thought A Few Good Eggs was supposed to be helpful. (Not to mention designed to be read after the alleged excesses of my twenties.) You know, supportive. Girlfriends dishing, saying things that dishing girlfriends say, such as: "I know it's hard" and "Here's what my experience taught me" and "How about another gimlet?" I'm not saying the factors they describe don't affect fertility; I'm saying I wasn't expecting a scolding. This is more like girlfriends saying mean shit behind my back. "There's Lynn. She takes her job very seriously. No wonder she can't get
It's super that women can have "careers" to "focus" on but hey, up to a point!
knocked up!" Thanks a freaking lot.
Could the authors actually believe that legions of twentysomethings will happen to pick up this book a book with a BABY ON THE COVER between Jell-O shots and say, "Sheesh! I gotta get cracking!" Seems like they certainly hope so. They insist that women in their twenties should "talk about family early on" in a relationship.
Worst. Dating advice. Ever.
I wouldn't be so enraged if these women were lone, insane voices.
But they're not. I'll never forget the USA Today editorial that blamed "picky" women for rising numbers of birth defects. "All of the thirtysomething women I know," wrote the author a medical resident named Scott Gottlieb "still are waiting patiently for their knight in shining armor to ride down Madison Avenue in a Porsche and whisk them off to his summer mansion in the Hamptons." Fuck you. Madison Avenue goes uptown.
And sure enough, when the Good Eggs authors were featured on Today and written about in New York magazine, what do you think was the hook? Do you think the interviews explored the enormous proportion of fertility problems that are traceable to the male partner, or the harmful effects of environmental toxins both of which are indeed addressed in the book? Of course not. The central theme of both features: how women are screwing this up all by themselves.
What we have here and elsewhere is a deep ambivalence about women's rights and advances. Sure, it's super that women can enjoy sex outside marriage and have "careers" to "focus" on . . . but hey, up to a point! Here's what our culture is still saying: See? We gave 'em an inch, and they took a yard.
And it's a special kind of bummer when women are complicit. But it doesn't have to be this way. The nice people over at Chicken Soup for the Soul recently published a lovely little book called The Conception Chronicles that succeeds in being funny, substantive, totally helpful and girlfriendy. See, people, it can be done. And so I cling to the hope that I can raise a child, girl or boy, in a world that does not blame women for its ills. But in the meantime, yes, thanks, I'll have another gimlet.
Lynn Harris is author of the satirical novel Death By Chick Lit and its prequel, Miss Media, as well as co-creator of the award-winning website BreakupGirl.net. A regular contributor to Glamour, Salon, The New York Times, Babble and many others, she also writes the "Rabbi's Wife" column for Nextbook.org. Visit her at LynnHarris.net.
