Category: WOMEN

Oh Gwyneth! Mom to Mom to Mom

paltrowdanner-gal-motherGwyneth Paltrow has serious mom shoes to fill.  Her own mother, Blythe Danner (you’ve probably seen her in those osteoporosis ads, or as almost everybody’s TV/movie mom…) is a spectacular actress who took a long professional hiatus to stay home with her kids as they grew up.  If you had seen her show up at that MASH unit in Korea as Hawkeye Pierce’s great lost love, or as Alma in Eccentricities of a Nightingale you’d know just how much she gave up and we all lost.  Her daughter has often acknowledged how aware she was of that decision.

I think one reason it’s tough to watch all the hating on Gwyneth, especially by other women, is that her mother is so extraordinary. I interviewed her once for a story on the Girl Scouts, of all things, and she was fierce.  About acting, about her leave from acting, about not raising her kids in Hollywood, about almost everything.

As I’ve watched her daughter all these years, with weird baby names and regimens and what seem like odd decisions, I’ve watched her the way a mother might.  Understanding and probably respecting the quest, the efforts to build an original life and, of course, the professional success, and worrying about The Interview  and other events that made her sound more shallow than she probably is.  Springing to her defense, as Danner did, seems reasonable.  The downpour of venom does not.

I know I’m challenging a lot of women I deeply respect but it just seems so —  unnecessary.  The women of America face a true political emergency, and if the right takes over Congress this fall we are in real danger.   Let’s hate more on the people responsible for that and leave this poor, complicated woman to fix what she can and recover from the rest.

From Bunny to Brave Leader of Us All. Happy Birthday Gloria!

Gloria in her "underground" Playboy Bunny garb for her 1963 expose in SHOW Magazine.
Gloria in her “underground” Playboy Bunny garb for her 1963 expose in SHOW Magazine.

I was 17 the first time I saw this, a Pittsburgh kid with grand ambitions for worldliness and intellectual heft and the ability to do the New York Times crossword puzzle in ink; so many that I actually subscribed to magazines like The Saturday Review, The New Yorker and SHOW: the Magazine of the Arts, where Gloria’s famous Playboy Club expose first appeared.

My reaction: “What a showboat, dumb thing to do!”  My (never-less-than-honest) mother responded “You’re just jealous!”  And she was right.  Gloria had done something I so wanted to do – and so early in her career!  How could I ever get from a Monongahela River mill town to that?

I never dreamed that Gloria, too, came from an industrial town – Toledo – much less that we would both have attended the same college, that I would hear her speak at my sister’s Smith graduation, and that, amazingly,  I would actually come to know this remarkable woman.  And here, on her 80th birthday, is what I learned:

In 1974, I told one of Ms’ spectacular co-founders how much I admired her.  She replied “That’s how I feel about Gloria.” Heroes have heroes too, and hers was Gloria.

In 1982, for Ms. Magazine‘s 10th birthday, I produced an anniversary story called “A Day in the Life of Gloria Steinem” for the Today Show.  The camera crew and I took a train from Penn Station to Philadelphia with her and followed her from event to event, including a couple of large public appearances.  At least once every couple of minutes, a  woman would walk up to her to thank her for something: courage, perspective, “you changed my life.”

Every time, every interruption, every stop on the street or in the hotel lobby or the ball room or the train, she treated each woman as if she were the first one she’d ever met.  She listened intently.  She responded in a very personal way.  Every time.

To Gloria, every woman: each of us, all of us, has mattered to her.  We are not just a formidable, critical cause, we are women who one by one by one have been living the lives women live, unequal, unheralded, amazing lives.

It is this that has made her the most remarkable of leaders, of change agents and of women.  Never, in all the marches and speeches and honors and sadnesses has she forgotten that each one of us is all of us.  She is not just a leader, she is a shining example.  And inside each of us, we know it.

Happy Birthday Gloria – and thanks, from all of us here now and the girls and women yet to come.

Take a look at this MAKERS profile, too.

The Wolf of Wall Street: Greed, Sex, Cruelty and Martin Scorsese

I understand about Martin Scorsese.  I really do.  From Mean Streets to Taxi Driver, Raging Bull to Goodfellas to Boardwalk Empire, much of his work has been dark and violent.  Decent people don’t show up very often and when they do, they seldom prevail, so when we went to see The Wolf of Wall Street this weekend, I wasn’t expecting a pleasant experience.  I was not expecting what I got, either.

By the end of the film I was so angry I was shaking.  After three hours of unrelenting greed, emotional violence, ruthlessness, the cynical exploitation of the weak, casually abusive and emotionless sex, indescribable disregard for and destructive treatment of women, it was tough to walk out of the theater without throwing something.  


It was excess beyond anything that words could describe; images, sadly, are more successful.  There’s nowhere to hide and there are so many moments where we wish we could.

I was a broadcast producer in the and 80’s and covered the excesses of that time.  I knew that, in Bonfire of Vanities, Tom Wolfe was demonstrating his skills as a reporter as well as a novelist.  

Even so, the rank, brittle ugliness of this film, of these people and of the fact that much of the story really happened turned what we know into what we wish we didn’t.  The criticism by the daughter of one of its main characters, that it glamorizes the Belfort universe and makes them some sorts of rakish sweetie pies wasn’t what I saw. The are all reprehensible from first to last.

Of course the film wouldn’t have had the impact it did if it hadn’t been so well-made.  Its impact is indisputable.  Even so – maybe his next undertaking, after all this darkness, will bring us the Scorsese behind The Last Waltz and Concert for New York City.  After all, they say music tames the savage beast, and in this film, he certainly unleashed a hell of a creature.

iVillage Heard Women’s Voices Before Anybody Else Knew How to Listen

Edcentral sized

 

 

Women need tribes.  Need each other.  

Two of the first online people to figure that out were Nancy Evans and Candace Carpenter Olson, the co-founders, along with two others, of iVillage.  Together they built the best online home women will ever have.  Parent Soup, where I worked for four years, was a mommy site before mommy bloggers or Babble or BlogHer.  Vibrant, warm and well-led, it served – and listened to – women with inclusiveness and respect.   

Well before blogs or social media, iVillage's topical message boards,  conceived as support communities like those in AA, engaged the site's visitors and provided a sense of home and ownership that didn't seem to appear anywhere else online.  They shared parenting and relationship advice and once, right before my eyes, rescued a woman from a terribly abusive relationship as all the members of the board came together to support her.

Today we learned the site will "be shuttered" and folded into the TODAY SHOW Online  under its current owner, NBC News.  

It's sad.  To get an idea of how wonderful it was to be part of what we created there, consider the deluge of comments  that followed a single post earlier today.  All of us are, I suspect, as surprised as I am at the depth of emotion this news has evoked.  We were all so proud to be part of what we knew was a remarkable creation.   And we learned so much.

My own first assignment was to design an education site for parents.  (The logo for "Education Central" appears at the top of this post.)  I took the initial outline to Nancy, who was Editor-in-Chief.  Looking up from her desk, she asked  "Have you looked at the message boards?"  I shook my head.  "Well go read the message boards, use what you find there, and then bring me what you have" she said.  She wouldn't even look at it I did that, and she was right.  

Rule one: listen to the community.  There was so much within those conversations that revealed what should appear on the site.  I've been preaching that lesson ever since.

iVillage believed in its communities, in their hearts and minds.  It gave countless women voices they would never have otherwise had and paved the way for the powerful women bloggers who have emerged after them.

Its leaders also believed in us, from novices to old hands like me, and in our mission: give women a home online and hear what they say there.  Believe, more than anything, in them.

 

 

 

 

 

Unplugged for Shabbat: Something the “Cool” People Want Too. Wow.

Sabbath-Manifesto-cell-phone-sleeping-bags-white-00351 Are you unplugged?  It's Friday morning and soon Shabbat will be here.  I'll light the candles and we'll go to friends for dinner and tomorrow to services and to lunch (I'm bringing part of it).  Later we're going to another home to be part of what they call a "shabbat hangout" where the kids all play and the parents (and their older friends, like us) talk, and study and enjoy the peace of 24 hours of an unplugged, non-electric, non-driving, non-cooking,  non-working life.* 

We started living this way five years ago, as I've often documented here (I dare you to read this one about observant Judaism and Patti Smith), and now it seems that others — many of them cool hipster digital types, — are looking to do the same.  Take a look.

Over these years I've struggled with keeping kosher, with the role of women, and with much else.  But there are moments of such beauty and meaning that I find myself spinning – knowing why I'm here and wondering at the same time.

I've always been Progressive; worked in the anti-war movement and the McCarthy campaign – and was in Chicago at the 1968 convention, and when I first found observant Judaism and Shabbat, it felt counterintuitive.  Too many rules.  Sometimes it still does.

But the reason why Unplugged is so great is that when you start, you think Shabbat will be what you hate.  No more errands or Saturday manicures or movies.  No phone calls or emails or web wandering. 

And then you unplug.  And even if – as I suspect will be true for many -  you don't go the way we went and adopt (almost) the entire package, you find the peace of what Josh Foer, in the video, calls this "ancient" idea, and are grateful for it.  And for the people around you — IRL — close, and easy and at peace.

*OK I admit it.  I'm really glad the health care vote is on Sunday; if it had been on Saturday it would have been a real pain.

This Is Up on Lisa Ling’s Facebook Page: Save Women, Save the World

Lisa Ling She calls it a "potential game changer" in Afghanistan.  Over and over we've learned that when women are empowered educationally, economically or politically the standard of living rises.  This is a great example. 

Women Bloggers Are NOT Cute Little Girls: Tell the New York Times

BH Cool Moms 2

What is it about women who blog that scares so many people – even other women —
even the New York Times?  Once again this time, they’ve decided to offer an “analysis” or a “portrait” or an I don’t know what
about bloggers who are women and moms.  And when they do, they write with
a condescending, bemused attitude that is what I remember from the early days
of the women’s movement, when men would joke about our desire to open our own
doors, earn our own livings, make our own decisions.  It was kind of cute
to want to be able to get credit cards without a husband’s permission, to cover
a story without having to go up in the balcony, to keep our names when we got
married.   Feminism was just so adorable.

Now, we’re free on so many levels, and one manifestation of that freedom is the
vibrant world we’ve created online.  Sisterhoods that cross race and
politics and religion and age as we share ideas and pain, joy and pride, birth
and loss and every other story that is part of living a life.   There have
been a couple of wonderful responses to this irritating TIMES piece (and it’s
not the first…)  One of my own favorites, Mom-101,
whose admirers are legion, wrote

“…once you
get past the first half of the article, there’s actually some solid information
in there….But I wish [all] that had been to focus of an article about my
favorite blogging community that just made the front page of my favorite
section of my favorite Sunday paper.  I wish it had opened with the yearning
of bloggers for the community to return to good writing, and the evidence that
in the end, that’s mostly what pays off….  

Of course, there
are more.  My friend Danielle Wiley, known to many of her friends as Foodmomiac but also an executive at Edelman PR, has also weighed in.

I invite you to read the full piece and form your own opinions, but sentences like “bringing
together participants for some real-time girly bonding” might very well stop
you in your tracks. As I write this, my husband (and fellow Edelman executive
Michael Wiley) is at SXSW. Would Mendelsohn classify that experience as macho
bonding? Or would she write that he is attending a conference for the purposes
of education and networking? Why do people, including Ms. Mendlesohn, continue
to refer to networking among women as girly bonding? I seriously doubt the
participants at Bloggy Boot Camp were wearing jammies and braiding each other’s
hair. However, from the tenor of the piece, it was pretty easy to jump to that
conclusion.

Here’s the bottom line:  I’m old enough to be the mother of both of these women
and many of their peers yet they have welcomed me as a sister – a blogger and a
friend.  They’ve honored the sappy posts I’ve written about my sons
and my marriage and they’ve shared ideas and advice in comments, in twitter and even in real life.

They and their compatriots are talented, compassionate,
ornery pioneers
who have built what I think of as the new quilting bee, the new Red Tent where they share the wisdom and mysteries that are women’s lives.  And they do much more – just go check out the list in Liz’s post.  Not for one moment are they
silly or unaware or careless or trivial.  And to gain a few points with
silly headlines and denigrating phrases isn’t bad taste, it’s also bad
journalism.  Go see for yourself.

On the Arrival of a First Child: Thirty-five Years Ago

Dan and Cindy

Two years ago I wrote this piece to honor the pending birth of a friend’s child.  It’s about the first days after the birth of a first child. Yesterday marked the 35th anniversary of that birth – so, one more time, here’s the memory – with gratitude and love.

What an emotional shock it has been to write this.  I need to start with that; the feelings, years later, are still there.

What an emotional shock it has been to write this.  I need to start with that; the feelings, years later, are still there. Since this baby shower is for one of my favorite bloggers, and
friends, I’m grateful to be part of it.  Our task is to share those lovely early
moments with our brand new children.  That’s why I’ve added this – which
may be the most perfect photo I own because it says just what we all know.
The connection of a mother and newborn is so complete that it’s almost
impossible – even with writers as remarkable as this community — to describe.
At least I can’t find words that say what I know this photo says.

This is actually my second son, very soon after he arrived.
He’s 28 now and more extraordinary than even I, proud mama, could have imagined
that cold November day in Roosevelt hospital in 1979.  He and his brother
both started off with beautiful souls though.  They are beautiful still.

When I think of those early days, it isn’t all the getting up at
night (although it could be) and it isn’t that I had so much trouble nursing
that I needed to supplement (although it could be) and it isn’t the absolutely
perfect terror that I might do them harm that accompanied the first days of
their lives (although it certainly, indubitably could be.)

Nope.  Here’s what I remember, and what I wish for the two
of you and all you other moms and moms-in-waiting:  it’s a cold winter
night, maybe after about a week as the new parent of son number 1.  It’s
dark, but out the window you can see the boats going up and down the Hudson
River (even though our windows leak so there’s ice on our windows, on the
inside.)  You hear a cry and struggle out of bed, grab a robe, go retrieve
this new little person from his crib, change him and move with him to the
bentwood rocking chair (of course there’s a rocking chair) facing the window.
And you hold him in your arms and you feed him.  The dark envelops you,
the dim skyline across the river in New Jersey is the only light you have,
except for the tiny pinpoints of light on the tug boats and barges as they make
their way.  And it’s silent.  Not a sound.  And, with this new
life in your arms, you rock gently back and forth.  The gift of peace of
those nights in the rocker was so intense that as I write this, I can feel it.
If I let myself, I could cry.

I remember watching my mother with each infant – can still see
her face as she responded to them,  thinking to myself then “Oh.
This must be the way she was with me.  How beautiful.  How
beautiful.”

And I remember this.  My parents came to us very soon after
our first son was born, helped put the crib together, celebrated with us.
Late one night, as I stood with our baby in my arms, my dad walked into the
room. Looking at the two of us, in perfect peace, he said to me  “NOW
do you understand?”  Of course I did.