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aureen Dowd talks like a Valley Girl, and I wonder if this is just her version of that journalist's trick of making your subject believe he's smarter than you so he'll talk more. Except that today, she's the subject and I'm the journalist and I'm from Nerve and she's from the New York Times and she's won a Pulitzer and I once won two tickets to a WWF cage match from KISS 108-FM. It makes me feel like somewhere, at some point, we must have mixed up our wallets. Can I ask her about orgasms? If she's had sex in the Times' midtown offices?
    Dowd's new book, Are Men Necessary?, is a paean to the allegedly weaker sex, and an argument for a fresh look at feminism, specifically her own preferred vintage: sexy but not slutty, strong but not domineering. Her ideal world seems to be drawn similarly to the art on the book jacket: pulpy, sultry, street-smart and a little bit dangerous, the woman with the red hair defiantly burying her nose in a book, aloof to her shadowy male surroundings as if to say, "I am woman, see me read." That's roughly the tone of Dowd's book, which has been alternately praised for its pro-sex bent and maligned for its women's-magazine gloss. But a little much-needed gloss is exactly what Dowd often critically provides, whether for a political movement or the sober Op-Ed page of the Times, where she is the sole female contributor. Dowd spoke to Nerve about how to sex up feminism without dumbing it down, and why the absence of womanly glamour is as tacky as Girls Gone Wild. — Will Doig

Your profile in New York magazine made it sound like you live in some sort of erotic undersea palace.
You know, when I read the description of the stuff in my home, I flinch. It's all scary, like my mermaid collection and my cocktail-shaker collection and naked women everywhere. When I bought the house, a French artist had rented it before me and she had put in these campy murals of semi-clothed Greek men and women. They're not bad enough to paint over but they're not good enough to be good. But it's only because I like deco stuff and a lot of deco stuff just has these gorgeous girls.

That's actually one of my favorite things about your philosophy: that's there's a place for camp in this movement, that it doesn't have to be this humorless slog.
Well, that's where they lost me in the beginning. The idea of spending all this effort trying to demonize Barbie, when women do want to talk about guys and babies and fashion and shopping. All this stuff that women like was frowned upon, and I just didn't want to lose any part of my womanliness. I didn't want to imitate men, I didn't want to dress like them, didn't want to work like them, or have sex like them. And I don't think that's good for men either.

So I think women lost a couple decades where we just kind of wasted time trying to do things exactly like men, thinking that we were supposed to take golf lessons but never talk about babies or shopping. But I think that now there's been a course correction.

You haven't talked much about these issues in your Op-Ed columns.
I was busy with war and torture. When you're worried about the Bushes — two generations of them — you never get to write about sex. That's another reason I wanted to do the book.

Is there any sexual energy at the Times whatsoever?
It's very staid here. And that's the way we love it. That's what the New York Times should be. What you want is a balance. We [women] don't want to dress like men in navy blue suits. We want to dress like women. But then you don't want to go so far at the office that people are silently judging you as a slut.

Do you think women or men generally have the upper hand when it comes to sex?
In the book I have that monologue of a friend of mine who's been teaching at Ivy League schools, where he described how these women, these fantastic Ivy League students, who are so beautiful and so Greenwich-Connecticut preppy, and at night they put on these hooker-like outfits and go out and get really drunk and give guys blowjobs in corners. And then the next day they hate themselves and come to conferences in his office and say, "I hate guys."

The point is that they have all this power. These are girls who are at the head of their class. But then at about one in the morning the power shifts because they're sort of drunk and there are no rules about dating anymore. So I think that that's the problem, that women are doing all the things they did pre-feminism plus all the things they did post-feminism.

One argument you make in your book is that the history of feminism has been more of a zigzag than an arc, veering from asexual to hypersexual. I take it we're closer to the hypersexual pole right now.
They've released themselves from imitating men and wearing those stupid little blue suits and having male orgasms. Now they have to figure out how not to be confused with hookers. They've got to reach that happy medium now that they've liberated their inner-slut and maybe pull back a bit. We just don't want to go too far back in the other direction, back to some Stepford Wife thing. I think the problem with hypersexualized society, which does seem to rise during a red-state period, is that it's not sexy. There has to be some subtlety. Eroticism as opposed to just derangingly sexualized everything.

You write about this idea of women trying to have "male orgasms," which means strictly vaginal orgasms achieved through intercourse with no additional clitoral stimulation. Studies have shown that this belief that vaginal orgasms are somehow superior is the reason some women don't have orgasms at all.
In the beginning, that was another way women were supposed to imitate men. Early in the '70s they'd always have these big stories in Cosmo saying there were two kinds of orgasms and vaginal orgasms were the superior kind. I think it took a really long time for women to realize that the superior kind is the kind you can actually have.

What's your take on faking orgasms? Is that an anti-feminist act?
Yeah, I don't know. There was this study that showed that women can fake orgasms but that their brain waves can tell you she hasn't actually had an orgasm. So whatever you do, don't get involved with a neurologist.

Does that make it anti-feminist?
I guess sometimes it could just be good manners.

Would you be willing to say if you've ever faked one?
No. That is way, way, way too personal. The book is not a memoir. I think some of the publicity has led people to believe it's me whining about my personal life, and I don't. That's why I have girlfriends. You don't need to pay twenty dollars for that. I'm trying to spur sexy conversation between men and women.

Is there ever any discrepancy between what you advocate for women as a group, as a demographic, and what you personally want for yourself?
I think it's good for women to do what they want. If they want to stay home and raise kids, that's great. If they want a career, that's great. I think to the extent that we have a lot of choices, that's great. I just think it's excess. Part of what spurred me to do this book was I noticed a lot of women who used to discuss things like plays and novels and books seem to be obsessing constantly on skin. The new status symbols are dermatologist appointments and plastic surgery appointments and the word "Mrs.," which Gloria Steinem had spent decades trying to get rid of. I was at the Times the day in 1986 when Abe Rosenfeld finally agreed to use "Ms." and she sent him flowers. So I just was fascinated with the opposite things that happen culturally from what they had fought for.

In the end, Barbie wasn't knocked off by the feminists, despite all their efforts. She was knocked off by Bratz dolls, which are, you know, little Angelina Jolies in slutty clothes with the big lips and the big eyes. Hefner was quoted the other day as saying the Bunnies are bigger than ever, and Roberto Cavalli is designing new outfits for them that are even sexier with S&M elements.

Do you think things like kink and role-playing can somehow help break down the gender power discrepancy when it comes to sex?
You know Ed Needham, the editor of Maxim, told me that women are always writing him saying, "How can I be a Maxim cover girl like Pamela Anderson?" He doesn't know how to explain to them that that's supposed to be men's guilty fantasy. Not their real life-affirming girlfriend.

One thing I think is interesting is how lesbianism has always been psychically tied in with feminism, and the idea of two women making out is also the most base male fantasy there is. How can it be both?
Well, that in a way ties into the catfight thing, which was another thing I thought feminism would get rid of. It just never occurred to me that by the year 2000 catfights would be bigger than ever. There are certain archetypal fantasies that you're never going to get rid of. One of them is the Barbie/Pamela Anderson fantasy. It's from Jayne Mansfield straight through Jessica Simpson. And one of them is catfights because it's too good for business. It sells newspapers. It sells TV shows like Desperate Housewives. It sells magazines: Katie Couric versus Diane Sawyer. You know? And so women are pushing it now because it can sell things.  n°

To buy Are Men Necessary? click here.