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War (and Love) Between the Sexes
December 12, 2007
I never thought editing reviews of self-help and relationship books would be so illuminating, but I am learning that there’s nothing like this category to let you know the world has changed, especially for women—and not always for the better.
Never mind the fact that I find myself referring to women of a certain age (under 30) as “girls”—a newly acceptable word that we shunned when I was in college in the ‘70s. At oh-so-feminist Barnard, we demanded to be called “women.” (Don’t get me wrong—Barnard was a fabulous school, but we did get a bit silly over things like that. Or maybe we just respected the power of language as a force for social change.)
But in those early feminist days, you would never have seen a book like The Panic Years, by Newsday trend reporter Doree Lewak (Broadway, Mar. 18)—a book that purports to exhort spinsters (i.e., unmarried women over the age of 25) to be alarmed that when a doctor’s questionnaire asks for their marital status, they have to check the box that says “single.” (And speaking of the world changing, what is a “trend reporter,” anyway?)
Lewak is only joking, of course—but in the ‘70s, even a humorous book like this could never have been published, or even conceived of. Okay, except perhaps in certain Orthodox Jew-ish circles, where going to college for the “Mrs. degree” was a not-unknown phenomenon.)
Lewak’s spoof on using feminine wiles to land a man is a pleasant tonic when facing all the serious how-to-catch-a-man guides that pour in before Valentine’s Day. (Look for a Reviews roundup in the Dec. 24 issue of PW.)
Women who are feeling the urge to merge might want to take a look at another upcoming book, the disturbing Erased, by journalist Marilee Strong (Jossey-Bass, Mar.), about what she sees as the growing number of men who, like Scott Peterson, want to “erase” their wives, murdering them and disposing of the bodies so they can get on to something better in their lives.
What does it say about the current state of women that all these books landed on my desk around the same time? Beats me, but for now I guess it means that a truce will never be called in the war between the sexes, that some demented men (actually, a lot of abusive men) take that war rather too seriously, and that it still ain't true that feminists have no sense of humor.
Posted by Sarah Gold on December 12, 2007 | Comments (0)
