I get included in a lot of lists (19 Blogs You Should Bookmark Right Now, Top 10 Aspergers Blogs, Top 100 Education Blogs, Top 50 Productivity Blogs) but I generally don’t pay a lot of attention. Lists are subjective, I don’t know who put the list together, and I mostly measure my success by if people care about what I’m writing (I usually judge by comments and social sharing) and if I’m making enough money to stay out of debt (a seemingly impossible feat). Read more
The first thing I see when I look at this photo is my son’s mustache. It’s wispy but pronounced enough to show in a photo. I told him a few weeks ago that it’s time to shave.
He said, “Mom. You’re embarrassing me. Don’t talk about my body hair.” Read more
First of all, let me say that I feel really bad for everyone who is losing Dave Goldberg in their life. I feel bad that he will not get to see his two kids grow up. His death is very sad. I have not had a spouse die or a parent die and I’m sure the experience is more awful than I could even imagine. Read more
This story begins at 3am in the Orrington Hotel when I am answering emails. I woke up in the middle of the night to my son vomiting on the bed, which we are sharing, and now smells faintly of chewed up room service fruit plate. Read more
I am a child of the feminist revolution. My mom tells me this story.
She hated being home with kids. She always dreamed she’d be a journalist. She she got a full scholarship to go to college. But when she was graduating, she realized that if she didn’t get married she’d have to go home to her impoverished family. Read more
Apple and Facebook announced that the companies will pay for female employees to freeze their eggs. It’s a great company policy.
For one thing, it’s acknowledgment that the gap between women and men in the workplace is that women’s careers are controlled by their biological clock and men’s are not. Another thing this new policy does is it gives women more reproductive choices. Similar to the pill, really. Read more
Women in their 20s have an advantage over men in their 20s because all men want to sleep with women in their 20s. And women have power over men who want to sleep with them.
I remember having this power. The first time I wrote about it my editor had to call the magazine’s lawyer. Now it’s pretty well understood by women that it’s easier to get stuff done in the office when everyone wants to have sex with you. There is even science to back up the recommendation that women should flirt at work to get ahead. And there is precedent that when you are in a meeting with a smart young woman, you can switch it to a date if you feel like it. Women know this is the rule, and they’re on their toes at all times. Read more
Black people should not wear hoodies.
That’s one way to deal with the problem of people shooting black people. Maybe not the best. Who even knows. I have a friend who is white, married to a black guy and they have two sons, who, as you can guess, count as black in this country. Even she has no idea how to teach black boys to avoid getting shot.
This makes sense. But I am mystified when I see that the Global Summit for Women this year was all men. That’s the picture, up there. Read more
One of my favorite twitter feeds is GSElevator. It’s stuff people overhear in the Goldman Sachs elevator, and most of it features bad behavior that confirms it was better for me to marry a farmer than the bankers I dated before him. But sometimes there is a gem like this one: “The grass is always greener on the other side of the fence because it’s fertilized with bullshit.”
That is how I feel about women watching other women run their lives.
I am constantly wondering about other peoples’ lives. I’m fascinated by how we don’t tell each other what sucks about our life. We don’t tell our partners why we hate ourselves. We don’t tell our friends why our marriage or our job sucks. Read more
The wage gap, of course, is the gap between men and women. We don’t talk about the wage gap between, say, black men and white men because the causes are so visible. Like, most black boys do not grow up with a father, and in some cities 50% of black men have been in prison.
But we talk about the wage gap between men and women like it is some Escher puzzle that we can solve through infinite stories in the media.
But in fact, the wage gap between men and women is as big a red herring as the gap between black and white men. Women don’t care about workplace stuff and men don’t care about home stuff.
I know that’s a stereotype, a cliche. But it’s a cliche for a reason. I’m right. Read more